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Lenox 

and the 



Berkshire Highlands 

By 

R. DeWitt Mallary 



Illustrated 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Cbe Iknlcherbocher prese 

1902 






THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two CoptEs Received 

JUN. M 1902 

COPVRIQHT ENTRV 

CLASS «.XXc No 
I COPY B. 



Copyright, 1902 

BY 

R. De Witt Mallary 

Published, June, 1902 



Cbe IRrticfterbocher JScess, "fflew IBotft 



51 

V 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

RICHARD H. WALKER, Esq. 

THE GRANDFATHER OF MY CHILDREN 

AND 

THE GRANDSON OF ONE OF THE EARLY 

SETTLERS OF LENOX 



PREFACE 

THE author's desire in the publication of 
these essays and addresses, some of which 
have been read before various hterary and 
historical societies, is to orient the stranger 
who is within the gates of the Berkshire 
country. Lenox has become so notably on 
the beaten path of travel as to demand, in 
convenient form, some handbook of inform- 
ation which shall play the part of guide. The 
aim of this book is not to write history but to 
tell enough of the story of the past to aid in 
makino- the reo;ion intellio-ible. 

Great pains has been taken to insure his- 
torical accuracy, but inasmuch as authorities 
are not always in perfect agreement it is too 
much to be hoped that inerrancy has been 
secured in every instance. In order to com- 
pass the aim of absolute veracity, the author, 
after consulting the sources, whether in books, 
town and church records, or in the collec- 
tions of historical societies, submitted the 
manuscript of this book to the perusal of a 



vi Preface 

few townsmen. Kindly acknowledgments are 
herewith returned to my friends and col- 
lege mates, Robert C. Rockwell, Esq., and 
Richard Goodman, Esq., both of Lenox, for 
valuable suggestions. I am also indebted to 
Miss Anna L. White, of the Lenox Library, 
for assistance in proof-reading. 

R. DeW. Mallary. 

" Springcroft," 

Lenox, Mass., 

January i6, 1902. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — Old-time Lenox ..... i 

II. — Lenox and its Environment, in Lit- 
erature. ...... 47 

III. — Catherine Maria Sedgwick: her Mes- 
sage AND HER Work .... io8 

IV. — With Hawthorne in Lenox. . . 136 

V. — Modern Lenox , . . . .161 

VI. — The Vicinage ...... 207 

VII. — The Genesis of Village Improvement 
AND the Laurel Hill Association, 
Stockbridge, Mass. .... 275 

VIII. — The Church of Berkshire uniil the 

Disestablishment in 1834 . . 294 

IX. — Epitaphs in Berkshire Churchyards . 342 

Index 357 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Stockbridge Bowl or Lake Mahkeenac 

Frontispiece 
(" Monument " and " The Dome " in the distance.) 
Thib was the view Hawthorne's " little red house " 
commanded. (See p. 144.) 

Lenox in 1839 ^ 

(A reprint from Barber's Hist. Coll. of Mass.) 

The Council of Washington and his Generals 

before Monmouth ..... 8 

(Bas-relief on monument at Freehold, N. J.) 
The council is evenly divided. La Fayette is urging 
the advance ; Paterson is sitting at his right, in 
front of Washington, and is in sympathy with 
the speaker. 

First County Court-House, erected 1792. Mon- 
ument to Major-General John Paterson . 14 

The old Lenox Academy, erected 1803 (now- 
used as High School) .... 20 

Walker Street, Lenox ..... 26 

At the junction of Main and Cliff wood Streets, 

Congregational Church in tlie distance . 36 



X Illustrations 

PAGE 

Second County Court-House (erected i8i6), 

now Sedgwick Hall ..... 46 

Fanny Kenible ...... 74 

Laurel Lake from " Walker's Hill " . , . 84 

Main Street, Lenox, looking down from the 
Church-on-the-Hill, "Rattlesnake" and 
" Monument " in the distance . . . 102 

Catherine Maria Sedgwick . . . .128 

(From the painting by Ingham.) 

The " little red house " where Hawthorne lived 
when he was in Lenox, 1850-1851. Here 
was written The House of Seven Gables . 146 

(Destroyed by tire June 22, 1890.) 

A vista, Lenox. Taghconics in the distance, 

Bald Head at the left . . . .166 

The view from the Aspinwall piazza . .180 

Rattlesnake Mt., Monument Mt., Stockbridge Bowl, 
Taghconics. 

Yokun Avenue, Lenox ..... 188 

Laurel Lake ..... o . 194 

Trinity Episcopal Church, Kemble Street „ 198 

Greylock from Onota Lake, Pittsficld . . 210 

The Haystack Monument at Williams College, 
marking the birthplace of American For- 
eign Missions, Williamstown, Mass. . .214 



Illustrations xi 

PAGE 

The home of Longfellow's wife, Pittsfield, 
where stood the " Old Clock on the Stairs," 
the original of the well-known poem by 
that name 224 

" Somewhat back from the village street 
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat." 

The home of Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Stock- 
bridge ....••• 230 

The house where William Cullen Bryant lived 
when he was a lawyer and town-clerk in 
Great Harrington, 1816-1822 . . . 252 

The Indian Monument, Stockbridge, Mass. . 282 

The Rev. Samuel Shepard, D.D. . . -338 

Pastor Congregational Church, Lenox, Mass., 1795- 
1846. 

The Church-on-the-Hill 352 

Lenox Congregational Church, dedicated January 
I, 1806. Monument with urn at the left marks 
Dr. Shepard's grave. 

The design used on the cover of this volume 
was reproduced from the coat of arms of 
Lennox, Duke of Richmond, a picture of 
which is hanging in the Town Library, 
Lenox. 




THE BERKSHIRE HILLS 

Age-long, the joy of succeeding generations ; 
Rock-ribbed, an eternal parable of firmness ; 
Commanding visions that emancipate and calm, 

beauteous in the daily and seasonal changes ; 
Whose many villas, crowning graceful slopes, deck 

Nature's bosom with Art's most lavish adornments; 
Whose fame in letters, joined with pastoral beauty, 

rightly names the region the " Lake Country of 

America." 




LENOX 



OLD-TIME LENOX 

MIDWAY between the mountain sentinels, 
" Greylock " and "The Dome," which 
stand guard one at either end of Berkshire, 
Lenox Hfts its head among the many emi- 
nences which seem thrown in profusion by some 
Titanic hand throughout this westernmost 
county of Massachusetts, Inhabited since 1750 
and incorporated in 1767, the village became 
twenty years later, with the settlement of the 
county northward, the shire-town, and thither 
the tribes went up, as to some Jerusalem of 
old, for the inspiration that affected their 
social, civil, and religious life. During the 
Revolutionary struggle it was the cradle of a 



2 Lenox 

genuine American patriotism, as was this whole 
region, and hardly had that appeal to arms 
been decided when Lenox entered upon its 
career as the county seat, a fount of judicial 
wisdom, scholastic learning, and social etiquette. 
Its first Court-house, erected in 1792, for many 
years occupied for town purposes and as the 
post-office ; its second Court-house, a more 
pretentious structure, built in 18 16 and said 
to have been surpassed in stateliness and ele- 
gance by few of its kind in all New England, 
now used by the Town Library Association 
and by others as a hive of professional offices ; 
its Academy, constructed in 1803, where for 
threescore years and more was conducted 
one of the most famous preparatory schools 
of that period ; its justly celebrated school for 
girls under the direction of Mrs. Sedgwick, 
who carried it on from 1828 until her death in 
1864; its village church on the hilltop dedi- 
cated to the service of God the first day of the 
year 1806, were long the most noted material 
survivals of a former generation, and most of 
these, with now and then a house of hoary age, 
are still the vivid reminders of a notable period 
in the history of this ancient town, showing 
that Lenox, rearing her head into and above 
the clouds, viewing landscapes of unsurpassed 




u 



2o o 



^ 



Old-Time Lenox 3 

loveliness, and touched widi the artistic adorn- 
ment of many villas, is also crowned with an 
aureole of glory, a mystical coronet of literary, 
civil, moral, and social greatness whose lustre 
pales not before its later splendor. 

Berkshire, which contains an area of 950 
square miles and was separated from Hamp- 
shire in 1 761, was not " discovered " until about 
a hundred years after the Pilgrim fathers set foot 
on Plymouth Rock. It was a trackless wilder- 
ness save as the war-path of the Mohican 
Indians could be traced here and there, these 
aboriofines havino; settled alonfr the Housatun- 
nuk (Housatonic), at the " Great Wigwam " 
which was located near the site of the pres- 
ent Concfreofational church. Great Barrincrton. 
With the gradual settlement of the county, the 
settlers cominof from over the Hoosac Moun- 
tains and more numerously from Connecticut, 
the redskins were in 1736 collected in one 
place, Stockbridge, where they remained until 
after the war of the Revolution. They were 
peaceable aborigines and have been lovingly 
and appropriately termed " the friends of our 
fathers." It was not, however, until the close 
of the second French and Indian war that the 
settlement of Berkshire proceeded at any pace. 
The district between the Housatonic and the 



4 Lenox 

Hudson was equally claimed by both Massa- 
chusetts and New York ; the boundary-line 
not having been fixed till constant reprisals 
and bloodshed between Puritan and Dutchman 
made it necessary toward the very end of the 
eighteenth century. Moreover it was a region 
in which there was certainly the fear of aborig- 
inal invasions from savages who swooped down 
from Canada upon unsuspecting settlers in 
adjoining counties and left nothing but ashes 
and crore behind. One such incursion did 
actually take place in Berkshire. The earliest 
settler to drive a stake in Lenox came in 1750, 
but in 1755 he with others fled before the 
marauding redskins acting in unholy collusion 
with the French. What with the Dutchman 
and the Indian who would seek to dispossess, 
and the mountain barriers on all sides, Berk- 
shire lay isolated, uninhabited for a century 
after the Pilgrim debarkation, fringed by life 
and activity, yet not participating in any of the 
movements of civilization ; and even after it 
began to be known, a country that seemed like 
golden fleece to intending Argonauts because 
of the dracron oryardine it. 

Wolfe was the modern Jason who freed this 
country for the settler to come in, and that 
victory at Quebec, by ending French misrule, 



Old-Time Lenox 5 

pushed back the tide of savagery far into 
the outposts. Berkshire was thenceforward 
greedily and rapidly invaded. Of the thirty- 
two towns at present existing in the county 
twenty were incorporated between the close of 
the French and Indian wars and the end of 
the Revolution, while only three were incor- 
porated prior to i 760. For the first twenty-five 
years after Montcalm's forces were defeated 
and Frontenac and the old regime had passed 
from power, the rapidity of incorporation was 
at the rate of a town a year. 

On June 2, 1762, a parcel of property com- 
prising the territory included now in the town- 
ships of Richmond and Lenox was sold at 
auction in the city of Boston by order of the 
General Court in order to relieve the finances 
of the colony. An unwieldy township in 
physical and municipal conditions, it was in- 
evitable that it should be divided. Crossed 
in the centre from north to south by a moun- 
tain ridge, the part lying west and known as 
Mount Ephraim was incorporated June 21, 
I 765, under the name of Richmond, while that 
section lying east, and previously known as 
Yokuntown, was set off by act of incorporation 
February 26, 1767, under the name of Lenox, 
respectively the titular and family names of 



6 Lenox 

the Duke of Richmond, one of the Hberal 
nobles of England, known to be a friend of 
the colonies. Scarcely eight years old, the lit- 
tle hamlet of Lenox, keenly interested in the 
doines of the Continental Congress, thouo-h 
grappling with the problems of a new settle- 
ment, found itself face to face with great na- 
tional issues. The local questions were largely 
ecclesiastical, havinsf reference to the buildino- 
of a new church, the provision for the support 
of a minister, the levying and collecting of the 
church tax ; and the town records of the period 
are filled with the differences between the 
minister, the Rev. Samuel Monson, who had 
been settled in 1770, and his flock. It 
will be borne in mind that at that time the 
church was the town and the town the church; 
even so small a matter as the selling of a pew 
in the sanctuary being a subject for town 
action. Mr. Monson's salary was only a trifle, 
and was partly paid in " fier-wood," but there 
were constant arrearages and the usual barbed 
criticism flew back and forth between minister 
and those ministered to. The little church, in 
which there was not a single young person, 
omitted to celebrate the memorial supper for 
seven years. 

Yet during these Revolutionary days, marred 



Old-Time Lenox 7 

by unseemly ecclesiastical strife, the element 
of patriotism burned with a brilliant and un- 
quenchable ardor. As soon as the couriers 
from Lexington could reach this recjion of the 
State, Lenox leaped as an armed man into the 
fray, and at least one distinguished soldier, 
Major-General Paterson, whose life has just 
been written by his grandson, the late Profes- 
sor Thomas Egleston, of Columbia University, 
was one of its mighty contributions to that 
memorable and epoch-making contest. The 
non-importation agreement which hangs framed 
on the walls of the Town Library, a precious 
relic of that heroic age, was another. Its ap- 
propriations of clothing and of ammunition, 
and its sacrifice of men whose names were on 
the military roster, were others. I find this 
entry on the town records as early as De- 
cember 25, 1775: "Voted, no more warrants 
shall be issued in his majesty's name to warn 
town-meetings." On June 3, 1777, the town 
directed its representative at the General 
Court, Boston, to " use your [his] utmost abil- 
ities with the Assembly, and they theirs with 
the Continental Congress that if they think it 
safe to declare independent of Great Britain 
we will stand by you with our lives and for- 
tunes." And Lenox was as oood as its word. 

o 



8 Lenox 

To-day as oft as Memorial Day returns, the 
graves of the soldier-dead who participated in 
the battles of Bunker Hill, Bennington, Sara- 
toga, and Princeton are decked, with others, 
in the ancient churchyard which adjoins the 
village church; a cemetery which commands 
one of the finest prospects in the world, and 
of which Fanny Kemble said: " I want to lie 
here when I die, that upon the Resurrection 
morning I may wake up with this scene before 
me." Here for more than a century the dead 
have been laid at rest, and amidst this bivouac 
of the dead, sleeping on their arms so to 
speak, are those who threw back the threat- 
ened invasion of red-coats and defied the 
trained battalions of the mother-nation. 

Lenox was, indeed, the hot-bed of revolt. 
A mountain country breeds rebellion against 
established tyranny. Wide horizons, even like 
those which the burgomasters looked out upon 
from their dykes in ancient Flanders and like 
those which the Vaudois-Huguenots viewed 
from their crags and clefts, insensibly enter 
into national character to broaden and enrich 
it. The education of a far-reaching landscape 
undermines the sway of tyrants or bigots. 
Lenox, by its very altitude had to be in 
sympathy with the Revolution. As Channing 




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Old-Time Lenox 9 

said in the last address he ever deHvered, — 
and one, too, which was given in Lenox, Au- 
gust I, 1842, on the anniversary of emancipa- 
tion in the British West Indies : 

" Men of Berkshire ! whose nerves and souls the moun- 
tain-air has braced, do not these forest-crowned heights 
impart something of their own power and loftiness to 
men's souls ? Should our Commonwealth ever be in- 
vaded by victorious armies, freedom's last asylum would 
be here. Here may a free spirit, may a reverence for 
all human rights, may sympathy for all the oppressed, 
may a stern, solemn purpose to give no sanction to op- 
pression, take stronger and stronger possession of men's 
minds, and from these mountains may generous impulses 
spread far and wide." 

Lenox entered upon its career as the county 
seat in 1787, twenty years after its incorpora- 
tion, owing to the rapid settlement of the 
county northward and the necessity of provid- 
ing a capital nearer the geographical centre of 
Berkshire. Thence on the villacre seemed a 
place to which all roads led. The stage and 
the post-rider always had to include the coun- 
ty seat in the itinerary of their journeyings. 
From a copy of the Be^^kshire Chronicle pub- 
lished in Pittsfield during the closing years of 
the eighteenth century I take the following 
advertisement which appeared in the issue of 
October 9, 1788 : 



lo Lenox 

" Zebulun Herrick respectfully informs the public that 
he has engaged to ride as a post, from the Printing Office 
in Pittsfield to the Southern part of the county, through 
the towns of Lenox (East-Road) Lee, Tyringham, New 
Marlboro, Sheffield, Great Barrington, West-Stockbridge 
and Richmond. Those gentlemen desirous of furnishing 
themselves with the BerksJiire Chronicle in those several 
towns may be supplied regularly and reasonably. Those 
gentlemen who shall please to entrust him with other 
business may depend on being served with fidelity and 
dispatch by their humble servant. Z. Herrick." 

Zebulun, doubtless, thought not his adver- 
tisement would be perused by curious and 
interested eyes a hundred years later, or that 
a sympathetic generation in the twentieth cen- 
tury would bestow immortality upon his brief 
business announcement. It was his custom 
to take his pay from his patrons in articles of 
food or merchandise, which he announced he 
would receive in place of the coin of the realm. 
Pittsfield received the Boston papers of Mon- 
day on Wednesday evening in those days, by 
another post-route from Springfield ; on Thurs- 
day the news from these metropolitan journals 
was republished in the Bei^kshire Chronicle 
and then with horse "swift of foot" the 
doughty Zebulun dashed southward through 
the county. Lenox eagerly awaited his arrival 
and took the deepest interest in the budget of 



Old-Timc Lenox 1 1 

news he brought. Zebulun was the one livinof 
bond which connected the region with the 
great, wide world. The country newspaper 
then was a purveyor of dignified, soHd informa- 
tion, chronichng as it did events of world-wide 
importance, instead of the petty items of gossip 
from the villages of the vicinage. 

Later, from 1828 to 1842, Lenox published 
its own paper, known by various names as it 
changed ownership, but the early pattern set 
by the Bei'kshire Chronicle was scarcely at all 
departed from. An examination of the files 
of the papers of the county for fifty years after 
the Declaration of Independence gives scanty 
material of local importance, whereas to-day 
the country newspaper has almost nothing of 
general interest. The era of daily metropolitan 
journals brought by the iron horse fresh from 
the presses had not yet come. The country 
newspaper therefore supplied this deficiency 
and the doings of national importance crowded 
into small space the happenings of town and 
county. 

It was not until 1838 that the peaceful soli- 
tudes of the Housatonic Valley were invaded 
by the din of the locomotive pursuing its tortu- 
ous way around the spurs, or through the 
passes, of the mountains. The first railroad was 



1 2 Lenox 

known as the Hudson & Berkshire Railroad, 
opened for travel to West Stockbridge in 1838 ; 
and three years later to Pittsfield. Miss 
Catherine Sedgwick, the author of Hope Leslie 
and many other tales, describes a journey she 
took in 1835 fi'oni Lenox to Boston, going by 
stage to Worcester, where the cars were taken 
for Boston. Six years after this journey rail- 
road connections were established between 
Boston and Albany. It was long before this, 
however, that railway facilities were enjoyed 
along the Hudson River, and as early as 1826 
the question of a railroad from some point in 
Berkshire to the city of Hudson was mooted, 
the first Berkshire County railroad convention 
being held in Lenox, November 16, 1827. In 
1838 came the railroad from Hudson to West 
Stockbridge as has been said; in 1842 the 
Housatonic Railroad was opened from Bridge- 
port to West Stockbridge via Van Deusenville, 
twelve miles south of Lenox ; on December 
21, 1841, the first train went through Pittsfield 
from Albany to Boston ; but it was not until 
1850 that a railroad actually passed through 
the eastern border of Lenox, the Pittsfield 
& Stockbridge Railroad, connecting with the 
Housatonic at Van Deusenville. 

Lenox was not, however, by any means des- 



Old-Time Lenox 13 

titute of means of egress and ingress. Prior 
to, and even during, this railroad agitation the 
village enjoyed the most elaborate stage con- 
nections, and the papers of the period are 
filled with the advertisements of this and that 
line, written in the most approved, yf;^ dc siccle 
style. There was the " Hudson and Pittsfield " 
line which passed through Lenox every morn- 
ing at ten o'clock, and by way of Stockbridge, 
Great Barrington, Egremont, and Hillsdale 
reached Hudson at 5 r. m., the fare being 
$1.75. Returning by the same route the stage 
left Hudson at 5 a. m. and reached Lenox at 
2.30 p. M. This line of stages made connec- 
tions at Hudson, both going and coming, with 
the New York boat. Miss Sedgwick notes, 
September 11, 1832, a wonderful quickness in 
the transmission of the mails. She writes her 
brother Robert, who lived in New York City, 
on that date : " I received your letter last night 
at eight o'clock, only thirteen hours (!) from 
New York. This is an annihilation of space 
of which our fathers never dreamed." This was 
doubtless by stage and railway connections. 

Notice that at this time, and for almost ten 
years afterwards, it was thirty-one hours to 
Boston, — by stage to Springfield in one day, 
and from there on the next to Worcester, 



14 Lenox 

where the cars were taken, — a journey lasting 
as long as that nowadays from New York 
City to Saint Paul ! The stage line from 
Albany to Boston passed through Stockbridge, 
six miles south of Lenox, and the Albany and 
Hartford line of stages passed through Great 
Barrington, fourteen miles south of Lenox, 
but with these lines of travel the staofe route 
from Lenox to Hudson intersected, thus en- 
abling the residents of Berkshire's capital to 
reach remote and widely separated places by 
transfers at the proper points. Northward 
there was a line of stages through to Benning- 
ton from Pittsfield. In 1835 there was still 
another stage route opened from Albany to 
New Haven, passing through Lenox and Win- 
sted, Conn. These were the main trunk-lines, 
making our forefathers' entrances to and exits 
from Lenox not so difficult after all. The ar- 
rival and departure of the stages, as the driver 
with a crack of the whip brought his turnout 
up before the " Berkshire Coffee House " (now 
Curtis Hotel), describing what Miss Sedgwick 
happily terms " one of those professional 
whirl-rounds," always frightening, if not en- 
dangering the occupants of the coach, must 
have been one of the daily spectacles on which 
the viHatrers looked with the keenest interest. 










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Old-Time Lenox 15 

From one of the newspapers published in 
Lenox (the Massachusetts Eagle, September 
25, 1834), I take the following account of 
" Lenox in Court Week," one of the few local 
allusions, but valuable as the report of an eye- 
witness : 

"The goddess has occupied her throne here for more 
than a week past, and our village has abounded with 
judges and jurors, lawyers and litigants, prosecutors and 
prosecuted. To us who live in the country the occa- 
sion is quite imposing. It presents us with a vast variety 
of characters: young attorneys in the bustle of new- 
found business and the older ones assuming more and 
more the dignified gravity of the bench; waiting jury- 
men chatting in little clusters by the wayside; worrying 
clients complaining of sleepless nights; witnesses of all 
orders, sizes, sexes and ages; spectators trading horses 
in the street, and politicians smoking over government 
affairs in the bar-room. Our boarding-houses have long 
tables lined on both sides with earnest applicants, and 
all expect more business. Messages are sent and 
errands done between one end of the county and the 
other, business accounts are settled, plans laid; caucuses, 
conventions and singing-schools agreed upon; news- 
papers subscribed for, and distant matters in general ar- 
ranged for the ensuing winter." 

This is probably a correct picture of Lenox 
in court season at any time during the eighty- 
one years it was the county seat. Modified 
by the changing styles of dress from decade to 



i6 Lenox 

decade we can almost see the picture as if 
painted on canvas. 

It is small wonder that Pittsfield, the grow- 
ing municipal neighbor of Lenox, hungered to 
possess all this excess of life and trade by be- 
coming the county seat herself, a thing she 
strove mightily to do from r8i6 until 1868, 
when she succeeded. It is little wonder that 
Lenox struggled to retain possession of the 
courts. A man with a half-dollar close up to 
his eye can completely shut out the landscape. 
Lenox failed to see its laro-er future because its 
eye was solely riveted on its smaller gains. It 
knew not that it was to relinquish its promi- 
nence in the county that it might step forth 
into larger renown. Steadily the battle waged 
between Lenox and Pittsfield, and when the 
new Court-house was built in 18 16, and again 
when it was enlarged in 1855, it was thought 
Pittsfield would accept the inevitable and cease 
to try to rob Lenox of its prestige. Not so. 
Referendums were submitted to the county 
for its decision three times during the progress 
of the dispute, on the question : " Shall the 
courts be removed to Pittsfield," and every 
time the popular decision was in favor of their 
being retained in Lenox. The county was 
sown an inch deep with campaign literature 



Old-Time Lenox 17 

on both sides of this controversy. It was 
urged that Lenox was difficult of access to 
towns on the south on account of the many 
ups and downs of the road leading into the 
village from that quarter. This is the road 
that now leads past the Lanier, Sloane, and 
Bishop places. Lenox remedied that difficulty 
immediately by putting another road of easy 
o^rade riorht througfh her trainingr-orround, where 
now the Episcopal church stands, to meet the 
other hilly road at a point two miles distant 
from the village. This new highway was laid out 
just before the year 1850, and has been named 
" Kemble Street " after the distinguished 
actress, Mrs. Fanny Kemble-Butler, who lived 
on it in the house named by her " The Perch," 
and still so-called. The creation of this new 
thoroughfare for travel had the effect of caus- 
inof a lull in the aoritation, but the discontent 
organized itself again when the question of 
enlarging the Court-house came up in 1855. 
The soberest and most judicious minds of the 
Berkshire capital were stirred to the depths by 
the renewal of hostilities, and Lenox made 
much of the argument that as it was already 
north of the geographical centre by some rods, 
Pittsfield, which was six miles farther north, 
was out of the question. 



i8 Lenox 

But there came a day at last when argu- 
ments were useless. It was becomincr from 
year to year more and more apparent that the 
summer visitors who were annually being at- 
tracted to Lenox, the gem of the Berkshires, 
were quite ready that the courts should go and 
with them the clatter and chatter and barter 
on the streets, the tying of horses in the pub- 
lic squares, the jostlings on the sidewalks, in 
short, the greneral hubbub and confusion of a 
small village congested with life. And so the 
decree that the courts should be removed was 
procured in 1868 — not so many years ago but 
that memories of the distinguished bench and 
bar and of celebrated cases are still told and 
retold by those scarce out of middle life, to say 
nothing of the treasury of reminiscences pos- 
sessed by the oldest inhabitant with reference 
to the proud dignity of the court-period in the 
history of the village. Many still remember 
the jail, that shadow which stalks in the wake 
of Justice, and the faces looking out from the 
windows behind the bars of their prison, which 
stood on the site of the present Schermer- 
horn cottages on Main Street. A still more 
sombre recollection, the executions on " Gal- 
lows Hill," near the site of the Robeson place, 
has faded out of the minds of all. As nothino^ 



Old-Time Lenox 19 

but the good has in it the power of perduring, 
the bad tending to its own decay and extinc- 
tion, so the memory of this olden period has 
survived only, or mainly, in sacred reminis- 
cences and holy traditions which every villager 
is proud to rehearse. 

Closely allied with the early history of 
Lenox, after it became the county seat, are 
two events which had the most incalculable 
influence on the town : one, the installation of 
the Rev. Samuel Shepard over the village 
church in 1795, his signally effective pastorate 
lasting a half-century ; the other, the establish- 
ment, in 1803, of Lenox Academy, a far-famed 
institution of classical learning in its day. To 
Dr. Shepard and his work some allusion will 
be made later. 

Lenox Academy was incorporated by an act 
of the Legislature, February 22, 1803, and was 
granted a township in Maine, which was after- 
wards sold, the proceeds being added to the 
funds of the institution. The building still 
stands with the date 1803 painted on its an- 
cient belfry, a venerable, unpretentious struc- 
ture full of impressive associations and used 
to-day as the village high-school. It is almost 
too hallowed to be used by the children of an 
iconoclastic generation, out of touch with the 



20 Lenox 

traditions of its pure classicism and simple life. 
Its surrounding and overarching elms have 
looked down on succeeding classes as they 
have ofone forth to make names for themselves 
in the catalogue of the world's worthies, the 
Hon, David Davis, of Illinois, President Mark 
Hopkins, Dr. Henry M. Field, Alexander H. 
Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, 
and Governor Yancy, of South Carolina, being 
among the number of those who have here 
been educated. I have seen many of the pro- 
grammes of Commencement Day in that olden 
institution. It was an all-day affair with 
speakers from a convenient hour after break- 
fast until nearly sundown ; a sort of literary 
set-to, or intellectual sweetness lono^ drawn 
out. The Congregational church was always 
the scene of these commencement exercises, 
the building being packed to overflowing. 

To be a graduate of Lenox Academy was 
not only a distinction, it was a passport to 
any college, and often to the sophomore class 
of a higher institution of learning. The papers 
of the day within a radius of a hundred miles 
refer to this preparatory school with glowing 
commendation. Its pupils came from widely 
separated portions of the country and the fame 
of its examinations, which were of unusual 








Co 



O Co 



Old-Time Lenox 21 

rigidity, attracted visitors from long distances, 
who repaired to their homes to spread the re- 
port of them. The tuition was very moderate, 
— $7 a term of fourteen weeks; and board 
reached the not exorbitant sum of "$1.25 to 
$1.50 per week in good famiHes." The tradi- 
tion has survived that one pupil (long a distin- 
guished educator and only lately deceased) 
"lived like a dandy because he had rooms at 
the hotel, for which he paid $2 per week." 
Lenox Academy flourished until 1866. The 
men whose names are identified with this insti- 
tution by long service therein as instructors 
were Levi Glezen, a somewhat eccentric indi- 
vidual but a rare disciplinarian and fine teacher ; 
John Hotchkin, long-time its widely celebrated 
principal and the founder of the Lenox Library ; 
and Matthew Buckham, now the President of 
Vermont University. Among Miss Kemble's 
poems is one with the title " To the young 
gentlemen about to graduate from Lenox 
Academy," and from it I take the following 
lines : 

" Ye were ordained to do, not to enjoy, 
To suffer, which is nobler than to dare. 
A sacred burthen is this life ye bear, 
Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly ; 
Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly. 



22 Lenox 

Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, 
But onward, upward, till the goal ye win. 
God guard you, God guide you on your way, 
Young pilgrim warriors who set forth to-day." 

But Lenox Academy was not the only school 
of classical learning within the township. Here 
was located also a school for girls, managed 
continuously during its existence from 1828 
until 1864 by Mrs. Charles Sedgwick, the wife 
of the Clerk of the Courts, who was himself 
one of the most prominent and widely respected 
men of the region, and whose sister, the gifted 
novelist, Catherine Sedgwick, made her home 
for many years in her brother's family at Lenox. 
A rare home was this graced by the presence 
of Catherine, who, though often in New York, 
where she always moved in the most literary 
circles of the metropolis, spent her summers 
regularly with Charles, in whose house she had 
a wing somewhat apart by herself, yet ever 
accessible to all. In another building on the 
same property Mrs. Charles Sedgwick kept 
her famous school; she herself an authoress 
who had written several books for children. 
It is not difficult to imagine that such a home 
of culture and refinement, honored and en- 
livened as it was by the presence of Catherine, 
who wrought here at her literary tasks, and 



Old-Time Lenox 23 

who was the correspondent of Sismondi, Miss 
Martineau, Bryant, Irvuig, and many others of 
the choicest intellects of this and foreign lands, 
would be a lodestone drawino- with irresistible 
attraction the young women who sought the 
advantages of an education. Among the pu- 
pils of this school at one time Harriet Hosmer 
was enrolled. 

Many are the references in the books of the 
day to this celebrated school for girls. Wil- 
liam Cullen Bryant, who practised the profes- 
sion of the law in Great Barrington from 18 16 
until 1825, and who doubtless often appeared 
in the Lenox courts, gives us a pen-picture of 
Miss Sedgwick at a later period of her life, 
when she, the distinguished author of Hope 
Leslie and Redwood, and he, the maker of 
poems which were already aflame with immor- 
tality, were closely associated in the literary 
companionships of New York City. There in 
the homes of her distinguished brothers, Robert 
and Henry, men of eminence in the legal pro- 
fession, Catherine found such constant visitors 
as Fenimore Cooper, Sands, Eastburn, Hill- 
house, Halleck, Bleeker, and Morse and Cole 
the artists. Bryant renewed and cemented 
in the metropolis the friendship begun in 
the Berkshires, and he describes her as 



24 Lenox 

"well-formed, with regular features, eyes beam- 
ing with benevolence, a pleasing smile, a soft 
voice, and gentle and captivating manners." 
Such a member of the Lenox home would be to 
the young ladies who were there pursuing their 
studies a source of unfailing interest, an ob- 
ject of devotion, an inspiration to high ideals. 
It is a pleasure to stand near the wing of this 
simple, old-fashioned dwelling, until recently 
used as the residence of descendants of the 
Sedgwick family, to look off upon the superb 
view it commands down the valley for miles, 
to feel one's self invested with and possessed 
by the memories of other days, — to see bright 
young faces here and there on porch and lawn, 
and now and then moving among them, with 
something of an air of mystery, the form of 
one who was a fine specimen of the New 
England gentlewoman. 

Two institutions of learning in the town, the 
presence from time to time of the court, the 
residence of the county officials, the superior 
advantages of a county seat for great county 
gatherings, the publication of a weekly news- 
paper, a bookstore and a bindery, a real live au- 
thoress moving along the quiet village streets, 
a prevailing type of high intelligence in the vil- 
lage folk themselves — these made Lenox a town 



Old-Time Lenox 25 

of superior intellectual attractions, as it was 
also of rare physical beauty. It was in the very 
nature of things impossible that such a moun- 
tain village could long remain undiscovered by 
men and women of letters seeking rest and 
inspiration in its picturesqueness, in the tonic 
of its fresh pure breezes, and in the quiet vil- 
lage life pervaded with so high an order of 
culture and refinement. Their writings show 
the impression that Lenox made upon them, 
and to these records, as well as to those of an 
older literature, we do not turn in vain for 
pictures of " old-time Lenox." Hither in 1 798, 
and again in 1799, came President Dwight, of 
Yale College, on his way from New Haven to 
Niagara. I find this entry in the voluminous 
jottings of his travels: 

" Sept. 21, 1798. 
" Lenox is the shire town of the county, and is princi- 
pally built on a single street, upon a ridge declining 
rather pleasantly to the East and to the West, but dis- 
agreeably interrupted by several valleys crossing it at 
right angles. The soil and buildings are good, and the 
town exhibits many proofs of prosperity. The public 
buildings consist of a church, a Court House, a school 
house, and a gaol." 

Later, in 18 19, Prof. Benjamin Silliman, the 
distinguished physicist, came to Lenox on a 
carriage drive from Hartford to Quebec. His 



26 Lenox 

picture of this village and the Berkshires is 
vivid. "Sept. 1819 :— It was quite dark be- 
fore we arrived at Sandisfield, but our road 
was good and the welcome light of the inn at 
length caught our eyes. We slept in a great 
vacant ball-room." Sandisfield is a " deserted 
village " now, but then it was one of the chief 
towns of the county in size and thrift, rivalling 
Pittsfield. The next day the distinguished 
traveller reached Lenox, of which he writes as 
follows : 

" Lenox, the capital of Berkshire County, is a town 
of uncommon beauty. It is built on a high hill on two 
streets intersecting each other nearly at right angles. It 
is composed of handsome houses which with the exception 
of a few of brick are painted a brilliant white ; it is orna- 
mented with three neat houses of public worship, one of 
which is large and handsome and stands upon a hill 
higher than the town and a little remote from the centre 
[the present Congregational church]. Lenox has a jail, a 
woollen manufactory, an academy of considerable size, 
and a Court House of brick in f^ne style of architecture, 
fronted with pillars. Lenox has fine mountain air, and 
is surrounded by equally fine mountain scenery. It is a 
gem among the mountains." 

Pressing on towards New Lebanon, at a 
point where the road steadily rises and then 
curves. Prof. Silliman pauses for a last look at 
Lenox before it is lost to view. 




^ 



^. 






Old-Time Lenox 27 

" What a fine retrospect we had," he continues, 
" mountains receding one behind another some of 
whose summits were struggling through clouds and 
mist and rain in obscure and gloomy grandeur. Beau- 
tifully contrasted with these was the bright cluster of 
buildings in Lenox, in which turrets and Gothic pinna- 
cles and Grecian pillars were conspicuous and seemed 
like a string of pearls upon the brow and declivity of the 
hill now sunk to one of moderate elevation." 

Upon Miss Sedgwick, who came here after 
the breaking up of her home in Stockbridge, 
Lenox made a disagreeable impression at first, 
but that may have been due to the intense 
regret she felt in leaving her native town. 
When the fog of homesickness cleared away 
she no longer saw things distorted. " It is a 
bare and ugly little village " she writes in 1821, 
" dismally bleak and uncouth, reached only 
after six miles of steep and rough driving " ; 
but in 1824, November ist, she thus solilo- 
quizes : 

"As I stand at the window and gaze on the hills that 
stretch before me in every variety of height and posi- 
tion, the sun sends his gleamy smiles along their sum- 
mits pleasantly and the little lake that sparkles in the 
valley, now that its leafy veil has fallen, is plainly seen. 
I perceive many beauties that I have been before quite 
blind to." 

Afterwards during the many years of her 
residence in Lenox the fondest attachment to 



28 Lenox 

the place possessed her, and when she was 
away from her home in the Berkshires, her 
mind continually reverts to the hill-country. 
" I long to have my eye rest upon those 
mountains," she writes to the dear ones in 
Lenox. It was she who attracted to this 
region those gifted Englishwomen, Miss Mar- 
tineau, Mrs." Jameson, and Miss Kemble ; and 
she it was, also, who lured hither William 
Ellery Channing, who spent the last summer 
of his life amid these picturesque heights. 
Who would not have prized the opportunity 
of seeing these literary yoke-fellows in their 
rambles and rides and drives together! Of 
that last summer of Channing 's life among 
the hills, Miss Sedgwick has left us scant data 
in her correspondence, but enough to show 
how delightfully the days passed in the un- 
conventionality and simplicity of country life, 
in the intercourse of lofty minds and gifted 
spirits, and in the responsiveness of nature to 
the varying moods of human thought. Writ- 
ing to Dr. Dewey of the events in Channing's 
visit she says : 

" He seemed to have thrown off every shackle, to be 
rid of his precision ; he was affectionate and playful 
with the young people ; he liked our anti-convention- 
alism, our free ways of going on ; he enjoyed, as if he 



Old-Timc Lenox 29 

had come home to his father's house, the forever- 
changing beauty of our hills and valleys, and he went 
away with more than half a promise to return to us 
next summer." 

Lenox was the summer home of Mrs. Fanny 
Kemble during the many years of her sojourn 
in America, and her books bear testimony to 
the place this mountain village held in her 
affections. It was with her, " love at first 
sight," and it did not wear off in after years. 
Coming to Lenox in 1836 she so identified 
herself with the town as to buy property in 
185 1, participating in village affairs, knowing, 
and known of, all. It cannot be said that 
Lenox received kindly at first the advent of 
an actress. One of the papers of the day, 
published in the village the first year of her 
stay here, was unkind enough to say: " Miss 
Kemble lost all delicacy of sex, strolling about 
the country." The mimic world before the 
footlights was too great a contrast to the stern 
realism of New England to make the entrance 
of an actress into the midst of it either com- 
prehensible or enjoyable. Behind the mask 
of Comedy the plain people of that day saw 
only the features of " the great adversary." 
One can scarcely think of a greater contradic- 
tion in terms than the village pastor and the 



30 Lenox 

world-renowned actress meeting on the streets 
of the quiet, conservative town. The germ 
of an interesting romance Hes enfolded here. 
But if Mrs. Kemble's calling surrounded her 
with an air of mystery in the estimation of 
the village folk, her phenomenal eccentricities 
of manner, dress, and speech only thickened 
the veil which screened her from any true 
view. Little did she care for these misunder- 
standings, for she revelled in the beautiful 
scenery which fed her soul and of which until 
her death only a few years ago she retained 
the most distinct and fond impressions. 

" I have been spending a month with my friends in a 
beautiful hill-region of the State of Massachusetts," she 
writes October 5, 1836, " and I never looked abroad 
upon the woods and valleys and lakes and moun- 
tains without thinking how great a privilege it would 
be to live in the midst of such beautiful things." 
" Here I am," she writes again August 24, 1838, " on 
the top of a hill in the village of Lenox " in what 
its inhabitants tautologically call Berkshire County, 
Massachusetts, with a view before my window which 
would not disgrace the Jura itself ! Immediately slop- 
ing before me, the green hillside, on the summit of 
which stands the house I am inhabiting, sinks softly 
down to a small valley, filled with thick, rich wood, in 
the centre of which a little jewel-like lake lies gleaming. 
Beyond this valley the hills rise one above another to 
the horizon, where they scoop the sky with a broken, 



01d~Time Lenox 31 

irregular outline that the eye dwells on with ever new 
delight, as its colors glow or vary with the ascending or 
descending sunlight, and all the shadowy procession of 
the clouds. Ever since early morning, troops of cloud 
and wandering showers of rain and the all-prevailing 
sunbeams have chased each other over the wooded 
slopes, and down into the dark hollow where the lake 
lies sleeping, making a pageant far finer than the one 
Prospero raised for Ferdinand and Miranda on his 
desert island." 

This was the view which could then be ob- 
tained from the hotel where Mrs. Kemble 
stayed during the early days of her coming to 
Lenox; a view which now is shut out at that 
point by densely spreading foliage. We would 
not wish to intimate that the Lenox folk of 
the present are tree-worshippers, yet some of 
the beautiful streets in the village once com- 
manding vast prospects have been transformed 
into mere umbrageous corridors, lanes be- 
tween trees two and three rows deep. It was 
not so in Mrs. Kemble's time, and here she 
thoroughly yielded herself up to the abandon 
of unconventional, recreative life. Every day 
she rode ten or twelve miles before breakfast, 
her horse being brought to the door of the 
" Red Inn," as she calls it, at seven o'clock. 
To Mrs. Jameson she writes of her manner 
of life as follows : " We laugh, we sing, we talk, 



32 Lenox 

we play, we discuss, we dance, we ride, drive, 
walk, run, scramble, and saunter, and amuse 
ourselves extremely; and we enjoy every day 
delightful intercourse with the Sedgwicks." 
Yet was it not all an idle holiday. Mrs. 
Kemble gave Shakespearian readings in the 
public hall for charitable objects, and often in 
private at Mrs. Sedgwick's before very select 
and critical audiences. Mrs. Kemble's resi- 
dence in Lenox is vividly remembered by 
many, and the memory of it has been perpetu- 
ated by naming a street in her honor. 

In the spring of the year preceding that in 
which Fanny Kemble bought property in 
Lenox, the author of The Scarlet Letter — 
a book which had just come out and was 
making a great stir — came to this hill-country 
and took a house on Stockbridge Bowl, a 
beautiful sheet of water lying less than two 
miles to the west of Lenox village. The 
house, a little frame cottage, was standing 
until within a few years. Its loss by fire ten 
years since was a distinct loss among the 
many objects of interest in this region, but 
the site is still hallowed, and although just 
over the line in the township of Stockbridge, 
Hawthorne and all those who have subse- 
quently built elegant villas in this part of 



Old-Time Lenox 33 

the town have been solely identified with 
Lenox life. Hawthorne's cottage comman- 
ded one of the most picturesque prospects 
in all this country of charming views and 
vistas. The little red house was the scene of 
Titanic labors. Here were written The House 
of the Seven Gables, Wonder Book, and the 
plot of The Blithedale Romance, besides many 
of the jottings for his Amei^ican Notes, and 
the fascinating letters which have been com- 
piled by his distinguished children in separate 
volumes. 

" It was the period," says Julian Hawthorne, 
" of my father's greatest literary activity." The 
House of the Seven Gables was written in five 
months of unremitting toil, and then Haw- 
thorne, to use Julian's words, "allowed himself 
a vacation of about four months," during which 
he devoted himself to the entertainment of his 
children and the enjoyment of the region, 
making that summer of 1851 memorable ever 
after in the experiences of his little family. 
Charming is Julian's picture of those Lenox 
days: 

" He made us boats to sail on the lake, and kites to fly 
in the air; he took us fishing and flower-gathering, and 
tried to teach us swimming. In the autumn we would 
go nutting with my father and he would climb to the 



34 Lenox 

topmost branches, swaying and soaring high aloft, a 
delightful mystery and miracle. It was all a splendid 
holiday, and I cannot remember when our father was 
not our playmate or when we ever desired any other 
playmate than he." 

This section of the town is, indeed, alive with 
the memory of Hawthorne. Here one seeks 
to reproduce all this, to fancy the rather deli- 
cate-looking man of hollow eye and thought- 
ful mien, to the ordinary villager somewhat 
unsociable, as he trudged to and from the 
village, where in the post-office he received 
and corrected his proofs; to imagine him, in a 
picture of his own creating, sauntering out of 
the little cottage down the road, a child on 
each side, now groins: for flowers, and now to a 
neighboring farmhouse for milk, along a path 
which he facetiously styled " the milky way." 

To that cosy home by the lake, bright with 
pictures, pervaded with the warmth and glad- 
ness of Hawthorne's personality, inspirited 
from without by the fascinating scenery, Oliver 
Wendell Holmes came now and then, riding 
down from Pittsfield, also James T. Fields, 
who drove up from Stockbridge. Hither 
came other friends quite as distinguished, — 
James Russell Lowell, E. P. Whipple, G. P. R. 
James, and many more of the literati of the 



Old-Time Lenox 35 

day. One knows not whether to look within 
the home or without it, for the more engaging 
and enrapturing beauty. Which glows the 
more warmly, the loveliness of landscape or 
the group of masterful intellects there col- 
lected ? We may say, en passant, that it was 
in the little red house, during this sojourn of 
her father, that Rose (Mrs. Lathrop) was 
born. In her Memories of HazutJiorne Mrs. 
Lathrop has added not a little to our know- 
ledge of the details of her father's stay in the 
Berkshires. To the gate of the little red 
house, which stood very near the road, Fanny 
Kemble w^ould ride up, grab the little Julian, 
put him astride the pommel, and canter off fu- 
riously, and after a mad gallop down the road 
a piece would return, depositing the young- 
ster at the gate again, saying "Take your 
boy, Julian the Apostate!" Mrs. Hawthorne 
writes thus to her mother, September, 1851: 
"It is very singular how much more we are 
in the midst of society in Lenox than we were 
in Salem, and all literary persons seem settling 
around us." G. P. R. James was in Stock- 
bridge and Herman Melville was in Pittsfield. 
The Hawthorne home was a centre of life, 
light, and gladness. For nearly two years, 
winter and summer alike, it formed a marked 



J 



6 Lenox 



addition to the daily life of Lenox and was only 
broken up by the rigorous severities of the 
colder seasons in these mountain altitudes — 
too rigorous, indeed, for such a frail constitution 
as that possessed by Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

Not far from Hawthorne's cottage was the 
house where for many years Charlotte Cush- 
man resided, and far on the other side of the 
town was the property bought by Henry Ward 
Beecher in 1853, now crowned with a magnifi- 
cent villa and still known as " Beecher Hill." 
One has but to catch up Star Papers to per- 
ceive the undisguised joy, the exuberant ecstasy 
with which Lenox filled the soul of the great 
preacher. His house, a simple farm-dwelling, 
stood far over in the eastern part of the town, 
where a vast prospect is obtained up as well 
as down the Housatonic Valley. As Mr. 
Beecher said : " By a mere roll of the eyeball 
I can look from Greylock on the north to the 
dome of the Tacrhconic Mountains on the south, 
a range of sixty miles from peak to peak." 
Greylock is the highest mountain in the State, 
rising to the height of 3500 feet, and at its 
base is Williamstown, where Williams College 
is located ; and the " Dome," sometimes called 
Mt. Everett, is 2800 feet hiorh, its summit be- 
ing the home of the Goodale sisters, much of 




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Old-Time Lenox 37 

whose verse has been produced here on what 
they aptly term " Sky Farm." Mr. Beecher 
revelled in this extended view day by day. He 
freely confesses that he bought his property in 
L-^nox, not to work as a farm, — though such it 
V .s, — but to " lie down upon." He always car- 
ed a book in his hand, " not to read, but to 
muse over," he said, as he sallied forth over his 
farm, finding here and there convenient places 
to sit or " lie down " and dream. The presence 
in town of so great a preacher was not per- 
mitted to pass by unimproved, and sometimes 
his voice was heard in the village church. It 
was he who said, standing in the porch of the 
church-on-the-hill, and surveying the beautiful 
prospect which might then be obtained from 
that ancient doorway, but which now has un- 
fortunately been shut out by a luxuriant forest- 
growth : " I had rather be a doorkeeper in 
this house of my God, than to dwell in the 
tents of wickedness." 

Like modest strawberries hidden in the tall 
grass, many other allusions to Lenox may be 
found in the varied literature of America, all the 
way from the Travels of the first President 
D wight to the romances of Mrs. Burton Har- 
rison, who has passed many summers in the 
town, but these will be the theme of a separate 



38 Lenox 

chapter. We have simply selected some refer- 
ences which came within the scope of our sub- 
ject, " Old-time Lenox," and these allusions 
serve the double purpose of enabling us to see 
an earlier Lenox through the eyes of those 
who have been " strangers within the gates," 
as well as to see the distinguished visitors 
themselves who from time to time have formed 
a part of the very life of the town itself. 

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to 
refer to the village church, and the exception- 
ally protracted pastorate of its second minister, 
the Rev. Samuel Shepard, D.D.,who was its 
minister from 1795 until 1846. Church and 
State were welded into one throughout Mass- 
achusetts until 1834 and therefore the parish 
was the town. Other churches there were in 
Lenox from an early period, but the Congre- 
gational being a part of the State regime was 
the church, as was the case throughout all New 
England. It was indissolubly intertwined with 
the life and thought of the people. Demo- 
cratic in spirit and polity, it was decidedly 
autocratic within its own province. Samuel 
Shepard was called to the pastorate of the vil- 
lage Conofreofational church when a mere boy 
just out of Yale College, where he graduated 
in 1793. He died with the harness on, having 



Old-Time Lenox 39 

ministered continuously in the same place for 
fifty years and a few months. He was installed 
at an open-air service just outside the church 
door ; his grave is near the identical spot of 
ground where that service was held, and is sur- 
mounted with a monument on which is this ap- 
propriate verse: " Remember the words which 
I spake unto you while I was yet with you." 
The village is filled with the story of this 
man, who lived to baptize the great-grand- 
children of his first converts, and who saw the 
promise of the Lord to " his children, and 
their seed and their seed's seed " fulfilled. 
Before me lie the installation sermon preached 
by Rev. Cyprian Strong when Samuel Shepard 
was " ordained to the pastoral office over the 
church in Lenox," April 30, 1795, and the 
semi-centennial sermon of Dr. Shepard him- 
self, preached April 30, 1845, summarizing 
the fifty years of his labors in the parish. 
The whole number of persons received into 
the church during his ministry up to that time 
was 815. He officiated at 969 baptisms, and 
953 funerals, within the limits of the town. 
He witnessed ten "special manifestations of 
the divine influence, or revivals," during which 
scores and even hundreds were crathered into 
the church. He was a man of cheerful, sunny 



40 Lenox 

temperament and social qualifications, some- 
what different from the prevailing type of the 
clergy of the period. An earnest preacher 
with a peculiarly deep, sonorous voice, his ser- 
mons were listened to with more than formal 
attention. He prayed always with his eyes 
wide open, and some good stories have sur- 
vived concerning this peculiarity of the beloved 
pastor. Once, it is said, while engaged in 
prayer, his eye caught an amusing spectacle in 
the gallery. It was the sight of a naughty youth 
having a sly bit of fun all by himself. The 
day being a cold one outside, and the church 
being insufficiently heated, this youth was 
holding up his hands near the red hair of the 
person seated immediately in front, as if be- 
fore a fire, and rubbing his fingers into a glow ! 
It is said that the praying pastor could not 
repress a smile. Dr. Shepard was a prominent 
man in the county, being one of the trustees of 
Williams College, and his services in public 
movements throughout the State were sought. 
He lives imperishably in the hearts of the peo- 
ple of Lenox, as do two other pastors of the 
same church in later years : the Rev. E. K. 
Alden, D.D., long-time the Secretary of the 
American Board of Missions; and the Rev. C. 
H. Parkhurst, D.D., now and for the last 



Old-Time Lenox 41 

twenty-two years the distinguished pastor of 
Madison Square Presbyterian Church, New 
York City. 

There is no time to speak of the great 
county gatherings which were wont to be held 
in Lenox because it was the county seat. 
Time and space would fail me to relate the 
tithe-part of the mass-meetings held here in 
the interest of temperance, music, literary 
culture, Bible-distribution, matters of public 
import affecting the western part of the com- 
monwealth, politics, and the like. Lenox as 
the shire-town felt a natural right of priority 
in the matter of these colossal conventions, 
and most incalculable must have been their 
effect. The great temperance revival which 
swept the country in the thirties found in 
Berkshire a hearty response. Mass-meetings 
of citizens from all parts of the county, of phy- 
sicians and hotel-keepers, were here attended, 
having to do with this subject alone. Berk- 
shire physicians here adopted the following 
resolution : " We shall hereafter not consider 
it a mark of civility or hospitality to partake 
of this insidious and baneful poison ; but will 
say when exhausted with fatigue and watching, 
' Give us food and simple drinks such as na- 
ture craves.' " 



42 Lenox 

It would seem from a careful examination 
of the county papers that the chief subjects of 
thought for ten years were temperance and 
sacred music. Great was the day when Lowell 
Mason appeared in Lenox to hold a musical 
convention. The spacious court-room was 
crowded to overflowing. Second to none in 
the place it held in shaping town-thought was 
the village lyceum which met for a great many 
years from week to week and was addressed 
by local professional men and by distinguished 
visitors on all conceivable sorts of subjects, 
the address being followed by open parliament 
or debate. The Fourth of July was observed 
in those early and simple years on a scale of 
surpassing patriotic grandeur, with firing of 
cannon, procession to the village church, 
speeches, toasts, and the like, and sometimes 
these patriotic occurrences were combined with 
special Sunday-school celebrations from sur- 
rounding towns. In this earlier history of the 
town were laid the foundations of the Town 
Library, which began to be in i 793. This early 
collection of books, with the library in use in 
the Academy, formed the nucleus of the present 
Town Library, which was organized in 1856, 
and which now contains nearly 14,000 volumes. 
John Fiske says that the town-meeting has 



Old-Time Lenox 43 

been the making of the New England people, 
but this, great as its influence has always been 
in Lenox, could be said with equal aptness of 
other towns. In other respects it has been 
exceptional, and in nothing more so than in 
its hotel, whose owners, going back from Curtis 
to Wilson, to Platner and to Cook, and back to 
Williams and Whitlock, have maintained (on 
almost identically the same spot) for a hundred 
and twenty-five years a hostelry. The pre- 
decessor of the present house was built in 
1829: the predecessor of that in 1797, and 
that replaced an older tavern kept on substan- 
tially the same site in 1773. It has been, in- 
deed, a succession of inns whose reputations 
for hospitality, for bountiful store, and for up- 
right management have added not a little to 
the fame and the attractiveness of the town. 
As a business centre Lenox has vied in other 
days with brisk Berkshire towns, having sus- 
tained large glass-works, an iron-foundry, two 
tanneries, a factory which turned out tin and 
willow ware, and it also operated a consider- 
able iron-mine. These industries have ceased 
altogether. A specimen of plate glass pro- 
duced here may still be found in the Patent 
Office at Washington, D. C. A word might 
be in order about the curious customs of a past 



44 Lenox 

age, but I fancy Lenox was not peculiar in 
this respect. The board where the banns of 
marriage used to be pubhshed still hangs on 
one side of the door as one enters the village 
church ; queer and quaint epitaphs greet the 
eye in the churchyard, but all these could be 
paralleled in many another New England 
town. 

Let us close this chapter by a reference to 
the great transformation by which the quiet 
village has become the famous resort. Inas- 
much as the beginnings of modern Lenox 
have already been seen in the progress of the 
story of other days, it may be interesting to 
note simply the process of change. We have 
seen that Mrs. Kemble made the acquaintance 
of Lenox in 1836, and that thence on for 
twenty years she was a regular visitor in the 
summer seasons, excepting a few spent abroad. 
As early as September 3, 1838, I find the fol- 
lowing entry in her journal : 

"The village hostelry was never so graced before; it 
is having a blossoming time with sweet young faces 
shining about it in every direction. The Misses Apple- 
ton [one of whom afterward married the poet Longfel- 
low] are here for a week, and there is a pretty daughter 
of Mr. Dewey's staying in the house besides with a 
pretty cousin." 



Old-Time Lenox 45' 

We thus see that Lenox was a resort in a 
small way sixty years ago. October 21, 1849, 
Miss Sedgwick records the following in a letter : 
" The summer visitors are all gone " ; but even 
before this, as early, indeed, as 1846, the crea- 
tion of great estates here had beorun. This is 
the beginning of the change by which Lenox 
has become a town of magnificent estates and 
mansions, the account of which belongs to a 
later period and will be told by itself in a sep- 
arate chapter in this volume. Prior to 1868 
when the courts were removed a number of 
these beautiful " places " had been created by 
people of large means and they dotted the 
landscape at considerable distances apart. 
Now more thickly sown, and even more pre- 
tentiously constructed, they crown every 
eminence, and peep out from their leafy co- 
verts on every projecting spur of the moun- 
tains, surveying a picturesque expanse of 
landscape and admired by every beholder for 
their lavish profusion of art and beauty. 

It would be difficult to estimate the im- 
measurable benefit which the coming of an 
afifluent class has conferred upon Lenox, but 
one, only one, of its benefactions shall be 
chronicled here, because it belongs to the 
period I have been attempting to describe. I 



46 Lenox 

refer to the ofift of the Court-house to the 
town by Mrs, Adehne E. Schermerhorn, who 
in 1853 purchased property in Lenox for a 
country-place. After the removal of the courts 
the question of the proper disposition of the 
property took shape through the county. Mrs. 
Schermerhorn at once intervened and with rare 
munificence and thoughtfulness prevented the 
removal of the ancient landmark. Purchasincr 
the building, and the plot of ground on which 
it stood, from the county, she donated it to 
the town, designating, in her deed of gift, that 
the structure should be used for a library, and 
at the same time giving the Lenox Library 
Association a permanent and gratuitous lease 
of the necessary rooms. And so the venerable 
pile, invested with associations which are elo- 
quent with the story of the dignity, glory, and 
former greatness of Lenox, links the town 
with its earlier history, which, amid the blaze 
of its later splendor, can never be forgotten. 





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II 



LENOX AND ITS ENVIRONMENT, IN 
LITERATURE 



IT is not difficult to understand how some 
^ regions, beautiful by reason of their scenic 
loveliness, should be stamped with a sort of 
predestination to a high place in literature. 
A natural beauty in the landscape does some- 
thing more than attract the tourist ; it appeals 
to those instincts which fashion the poet or 
the artist. It is also true that the literary tradi- 
tions and artistic surroundings of any locality 
prepare a soil out of which spring the very con- 
ditions favorable to the maintenance of Its 
prestige. By the river Arno, in the "lake 
region " of Cumberland and Westmoreland, or 
on the placid river which flows throu^rh the 
Concord meadows what congestion of literary 
associations ! Like the instinct of the bee 
which, separated by great distances from the 
hive, possesses the infallible sense of direction 

47 



48 Lenox 

for Its return, so too the lovely " nooks and 
corners " on the earth's surface are irresistibly 
and unerringly attracting choice spirits, which 
some way are sure to find them out and pre- 
empt them in the interests of their craft or 
clan. Berkshire is no exception to this, and 
at one time Lenox was fairly entitled to the 
name it received, "a jungle of literary lions." 
It shall be our task in this chapter to present 
a few of the many pages where Lenox and 
the Berkshires have been the inspiring themes 
of graceful and distinguished writers ; to trace 
the literary thread in the story of the village 
and the region. 

Just a little foreword, then, supplementing 
rather than repeating what was said in the pre- 
vious chapter. It will be remembered that 
Berkshire lay practically undiscovered until 
1724, when the first settlers obtained from the 
Mohican Indians, for the consideration^ of 
" ^460, three barrels of cider, and thirty 
quarts of rum," that portion of land comprised 
in the present townships of Sheffield, Great 
Barrington, Mount Washington, Egremont, 
Alford? and some part of Stockbridge, West 
Stockbridge, and Lee. This is that section 
of the county which extends on the west side 
of the Housatonic River from the Taghconic 



Lenox in Literature 49 

Dome to Monument Mountain. In 1736, the 
General Court ordered to be laid out on the east 
side of same river four towns which became 
known asTyringham, New Marlborough, Sand- 
isfield, and Becket, but which were called at first 
simply and respectively townships i, 2, 3, and 
4 ; and in the same year the colonial legislature 
granted the Indians a township, or reserva- 
tion, immediately north of, and contiguous to, 
the first-named section. This reservation was 
an exact square six miles, on each side, and 
embraced the land occupied by the present 
townships of Stockbridge and West Stock- 
bridge. It was called by the Indians Wnogh- 
que-too-koke, and here they were collected for 
missionary instruction under Sergeant. It 
would take us too far afield to recite here the 
order and extent of grants by the General 
Court to individuals in this part of Western 
Massachusetts, then, and until 1761, included 
in Hampshire County. Suffice it to say that 
it was not until i 750 that the first settler drove 
a stake in Lenox, although there had pre- 
viously been two large land grants in the re- 
gion, one in 1738 to the heirs of Judge 
Edmund Quincy in the northeast, and another, 
the same year, to some ministers in the south, of 
what is now Lenox township. The " Quincy 



50 Lenox 

grant " contained a thousand acres, and its 
southern boundary was not far from the north- 
ern Hne of the present estate of Mrs. R. T. 
Auchmuty. The grant was in recognition of 
the eminent services of Judge Quincy to the 
State, he having been selected by the General 
Court to lay the matter of the disputed boun- 
dary between Massachusetts and New Hamp- 
shire before the home government, and dying 
soon after his arrival in London with small- 
pox contracted by inoculation. The " Mini- 
sters' grant," so-called, was a tract of four 
thousand acres, and comprised that tongue of 
land, in the southern part of the town, whose 
tip wedges in between Stockbridge and Lee, 
and, including what is now known as Laurel 
Lake, this grant extended northward consid- 
erably beyond the high ground on which 
Lenox village is situated. 

It is in connection with this " Ministers' 
grant " that, I venture to say, the first associa- 
tion of Lenox with literature is traced, though 
more accurately it might be said with a name 
great in the sacred literature of the world — 
Jonathan Edwards. This extensive grant 
was divided among the seven grantees in 
parcels or strips from east to west, of 480 
acres each, with one or two exceptions, and 



Lenox in Literature 51 

one fell to Jonathan Edwards, who at that 
time was minister to the church at Northamp- 
ton. It is on that Edwards section that the 
village of Lenox, along one of its principal 
streets, Walker Street, stands. It is more 
customary to associate Edwards with Stock- 
bridge, where until within a year the house in 
which he wrote The Freedom of tJie Will was 
still standincr, but the distinouished theoloofian 
had a property interest in what was to 
be the future town of Lenox. It must have 
been that many times during the years of his 
Stockbridge pastorate, 1751-58, he would 
ride up the hills towards his real-estate hold- 
ings while he thought out some deep prob. 
lem in metaphysics, or meditated some adroit 
manoeuvre to circumvent those who constantly 
harassed the missionary interests and fleeced 
the Indians. It is at least pleasant to connect 
Lenox with the name of Edwards, to whose 
short ministry in Stockbridge, if not to the 
lonaer one " in the solitudes of the North- 
ampton woods," Whittier refers in his poem, 
The Preacher : 

" In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought. 
Shaping his creed at the forge of thought ; 
And with Thor's own hammer welded and bent 
The iron links of his argument, 



52 Lenox 

Which strove to grasp in its mighty span 
The purpose of God and the fate of man ! " 

Lenox during the first decade of its history, 
from 1750 until 1760, was such an unfavorable 
place for residence, owing to the fear of in- 
cursions of maraudinof bands of Indians, that 
its growth was much impeded, and, in common 
with all other parts of the county, it was not 
till the French power was crippled at Quebec 
in 1759, ^'^^^ thus the Indian incursions con- 
fined to the remoter territory at the north 
beyond the St. Lawrence, that the settle- 
ment of Berkshire could proceed. There was 
growth in the southern part of the county, 
but the middle and northern portions were 
unsafe prior to the year 1760. Hardly had 
peace been declared between Great Britain 
and France when settlers poured into Berk- 
shire. So far as Lenox is concerned events 
proceed rapidly. The county of Berkshire 
was set off by the General Court in May, 1761, 
its northern boundary New Hampshire and 
its western boundary the somewhat indetermi- 
nate and disputed line between Massachusetts 
and New York, a line which was not accurately 
and satisfactorily run until the summer of 1787. 
On June 2, 1762, the General Court ordered 
ten townships to be sold in the western part 



Lenox in Literature 53 

of the State, and " Lot No. 8," comprising 
the present towns of Lenox and Richmond, 
was knocked down to the highest bidder, 
Josiah Dean, for ^2550, but owing to some 
claims of the Indians, and a prior ckiim of 
one Samuel Brown, and others who had 
bought the land covered in the sale to Dean 
by purchase from the Indians for ^^1700, 
the grant was finally confirmed by the State 
to Brown, he paying Dean ^650. This pur- 
chase did not of course, invalidate previous 
grants in the same district, and the whole, 
which had been named for the chiefs of whom 
the land had been bought, was incorporated 
under the name Richmond in 1765, until 1767, 
when that portion of the township which 
had gone by the name of Yokuntown was 
called Lenox, by act of incorporation. 

It is a fitting place, then, to stop, and take 
a little measure of Lennox, Duke of Richmond, 
inasmuch as Governor Bernard (Francis Ber- 
nard, Governor of Massachusetts, 1760-69) 
bestowed the titular and family names of this 
eminent nobleman and statesman upon what 
were Mount Ephraim and Yokuntown. Charles 
Lennox, Duke of Richmond, and Baron Me- 
thuen in the peerage of Scotland, was born in 
London, February 22, 1734-35. Choosing the 



54 Lenox 

army for his profession he became attached to 
the court, and by rapid promotions was succes- 
sively Lord of the Bedchamber (1760), Major- 
General (1761), Lord Lieutenant of Sussex 
(1763), and Secretary of State (1766). When 
the town of Lenox was named for him he was 
Minister Plenipotentiary of the Most Chris- 
tian King. The Duke of Richmond played a 
very important part in the counsels of state 
incident to the troublous questions connected 
with the breaking out of the American Revo- 
lution and was a member of various ministries 
during and after the unsuccessful attempt of 
Great Britain to subdue her colonies. He 
was an earnest Whig, decidedly radical in his 
views and a vigorous exponent of democracy. 
On the pages of, Lecky's History of England 
in the Eighteenth Centnry he is conspicuous 
among the dramatis personce of the time, and 
throughout the polished letters of that court- 
gossip, Horace Walpole, there are many very 
interesting references to the high social prom- 
inence of his Grace, the Duke of Richmond. 
He carried the sceptre with the dove at the 
coronation of George HL He opposed the 
war with America and was for surrendering 
the English dominion over the colonies, de- 
claring this view as early as 1776, as he wished 



Lenox in Literature 55 

to make America England's ally in case of 
future wars with France, and as he feared a 
victory of England over America would give 
the Tory element at home a long lease of 
power, and would be fatal to English liberty. 
America had to be free, in other words, that 
England mi^^ht be free. 

It is not difficult to imagine that the Duke's 
radical views made him a little out of joint 
with the times, and as he took a rather gloomy 
view of Enorland's cause and condition at the 
outbreak of the American Revolution, he ab- 
stained several years from the court of George 
III., being recalled to the service of the state 
and serving in the ministries of Rockingham 
and Pitt when the war was over. He was, 
however, always an interested participant in 
all national affairs ; and favored universal suf- 
frage, though Burke opposed it. He was a 
man, says Lecky, " of great influence and abil- 
ity." He really was one of the founders of 
the Liberal party which began to be in those 
corrupt days preceding the Stamp Act, and 
which was fostered by some young men of 
high nobility, "high in rank," says Trevelyan, 
" with rare exceptions, and most of them too 
rich, and all too manly, to be purchased," 
whose creed was summed up by one of their 



56 Lenox 

own number, Edmund Burke, as " the princi- 
ples of morality enlarged." There were many 
stormy scenes in Parliament where the Duke 
of Richmond was a centre of interest and dra- 
matic action; once when he opposed a motion 
to clear the galleries, and thereby precipitated 
an uproar in the House of Lords, in the midst 
of which the Duke of Richmond himself 
walked out followed by a very large train of 
peers, protesting thus energetically against 
any Star -Chamber proceedings; and again 
when he moved in the Lords on the 7th of 
April, 1778, that the war with America be 
stopped, upon the best terms obtainable for 
Encrland, to which resolution Chatham replied 
in an impassioned speech which caused him to 
sink in an apoplectic fit from which he did 
not recover. The Duke of Richmond became 
very unpopular on account of his radical po- 
litical morality and intensely democratic spirit. 
The family name Lennox was spelled with 
two lis, though on the tomb of the Duke of 
Richmond it appears with only one; and the 
ancestor of the Duke for whom Lenox is 
named affixed his signature to the original 
grant by Charles L to the Plymouth Colony as 
" Lenox." The omission of one n in the 
name of the town is ascribed to accident occa- 



Lenox in Literature 57 

sioned by the difference in writing double let- 
ters, which were written formerly as one letter 
through which passed a dash, indicating that 
the letter was to be repeated. It is thought 
the dash came to be omitted by inadvertence, 
and so the present spelling with one /^ adopted. 
The literary traditions of Lenox and of the 
region could not be written without some 
reference to the " Stockbridge Indians," so- 
called, an extended reference to whom will be 
deferred until later. Suffice it to say that 
traces of aboriginal occupancy still survive, 
though somewhat faintly m connection with 
the names of mountain, lake, stream, and 
street, and though appearing as a palimpsest 
under other and less romantic names, yet the 
Indian nomenclature of nature's points of in- 
terest is not entirely obliterated. Afar off to 
the north rises Greylock thirty-five hundred 
feet, called Saddleback by the early settlers, 
but I cannot find that it ever had an Indian 
name. The Berkshire Mountains were the 
hunting-grounds for the " River Indians," liv- 
ing along the Mahecannituck (Hudson), and 
the little lake lying just north of Pittsfield has 
received the name Pontoosuck (" Field of the 
Winter Deer"), which was the original name of 
what is now the city of Pittsfield, although 



5^ Lenox 

the lake itself was called by the Indians 
Skoon - keek - moon - keek. But if Greylock 
seems to have had no distinctive Indian name, 
the beauty which its name suggests has been 
repeatedly celebrated by the masters of poetry 
and prose. From Lenox it stands out an 
isolated saddle high up on the northern sky 
and fitted only for a Titan's frame. It is the 
highest mountain in the State, and its appear- 
ance in the form of a saddle is really formed 
by two summits, one rising a little behind and 
at the side of the other. Turning the eyes in 
the opposite direction from Greylock as one 
stands on the high elevation in Lenox just 
north of the village known as " Church Hill," 
and looking off to the south, it is not difficult 
to reclothe with their olden Mohican appella- 
tions the prominent features in the charming 
landscape stretching away from the beholder. 
Far away, twenty miles as the crow ffies, rises 
the solitary Tagh-kan-nuc (" Forest"), or as it 
is called, and as it indeed appears in the 
central part of Berkshire, the " Dome of the 
Taghconics," and between it and the height 
from which we are looking rose to the red- 
skin the tops of Maus-wa-see-khi (" Fisher's 
Nest "), now called Monument Mountain, and 
Deowkook, or " Hill of the Wolves," now 



Lenox in Literature 59 

Rattlesnake, though another name by which 
the latter is said to have been known to the 
Indians is Mau-sku-fee-haunk. It is an en- 
chanting prospect, one vast intervale walled in 
by the Hoosacs on the east and the Taghcon- 
ics on the west, Deowkook, Maus-wa-see-khi, 
and Tagh-kan-nuc rising successively higher 
and higher into the far distance, while near us, 
nestlingr under the heights of Deowkook on 
the right is the placid and beautiful Mah-kee- 
nac, and on the hither side Per-quan-a-pa-qua 
(" Lake of the Still Water "), on whose surfaces 
are mirrored the surrounding hills. 

If now we see the view before us at a higher 
altitude, as some eagle that only, touches foot 
on the peaks to rest must see it in its flight 
through the upper airs, the mountains would 
be stunted, but running through the heart of 
the vale would be seen the extremely tortuous 
twistings and windings of the Hoo-es-ten- 
nuc (Housatonic), " Over the Mountain," as 
it makes its way from its sources by its 
west branch in Skoon-keek-moon-keek and 
Onota, near Pontoosuck (Pittsfield), onwards 
to the sea. At Wnogh-que-too-koke (Stock- 
bridge), which lies there just beyond Mah- 
keenac, and on this side of Maus-wa-see-khi, 
we should see the Hoo-es-ten-nuc receiving the 



6o Lenox 

waters of the Konkapot brook, so named after 
the chief who hved beside it, then we should 
see the main stream of the valley cutting a way 
for itself through the gorge just below, called 
by the Indians " Pack-wa-ke " (a term signify- 
ing bend or elbow by which the aborigines 
designated the sharp turn in the Housatonic at 
Glendale), and becoming a little farther down 
" Sagistonac " (meaning " Water Splashing 
over the Rocks,") or falls, near which place the 
Waumpa-nick-se-poot or Green River, having 
itself just been swollen by the Seekonk (" Wild 
Goose "), joins the larger and main river of the 
valley. This place where the H oo-es-ten-nuc and 
Waumpa-nick-se-poot unite was a " Skatekook," 
or " a place where a small stream enters into a 
large one, and corn-lands adjoin," and this 
name Skatekook was applied to the primitive 
and aboriginal settlement of what subsequently 
became Sheffield, the earliest town to be set- 
tled and incorporated in Berkshire. Almost 
all of this Indian nomenclature has disappeared 
from practical use, but a great many legends 
of the aborigines survive in various sections of 
Berkshire, and are told in Skinner's Myths 
and Legends of Our Own Land. Far off " Tagh- 
conic," called simply " The Dome," was chris- 
tened " Mount Everett" by Dr. Hitchcock, State 



Lenox in Literature 6i 

geologist, in 1839, in honor of Edward Everett, 
the Governor of the commonweahh, and though 
bitterly protested against the name has found 
its way into current use, particularly in the 
southern portion of the county, where its ap- 
pearance as a dome is less marked. One of 
the most earnest opponents of the change of 
name was Miss Catherine Sedgwick, but she 
is the reputed originator of the name " Stock- 
bridge Bowl," which has entirely supplanted 
" Lake Mahkeenac " for which it was substi- 
tuted. 

It would take us too far afield to point out 
all the literary associations connected with the 
points of interest, as our eye sweeps the hori- 
zon and the magnificent prospect before us. 
Afar off in the north on the farther slopes of 
Greylock, yet within the limits of the Berkshire 
country, Williams College has quietly pur- 
sued its academic ideals for a hundred years, 
and there the deep impress of Mark Hopkins's 
broad and classic spirit is still felt ; nearer, and 
skirting the east of Pittsfield, is the region 
which is still redolent with the memory of 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, who spent seven 
summers, 1849-56, on a part of the old farm 
belonging originally to his great-grandfather, 
Jacob Wendell (three of Dr. Holmes's children 



62 Lenox 

havincr been born there duringr this Pittsfield 
sojourn), and we learn from the poet that 
" all of the present town of Pittsfield, except 
one thousand acres, was the property of my 
great-grandfather, who owned a section six 
miles square bought of the Province." There 
to the south are the steepling crags of Monu- 
ment, which Bryant has immortalized, and near 
it the Green River, by whose banks he roamed 
when town clerk in the little villag-e of Great 
Harrington, on the other side of Mauswaseekhi. 
There are other literary names written across 
the picture, great names and small, and Lenox 
itself is resplendent in the galaxy of letters 
with many stars of the first magnitude. If you 
care to know, there on those hillside meadows 
yonder looking down on Skoon-keek-moon- 
keek, now called Pontoosuck Lake, " Josh Bill- 
ings " was born, and you may see any day his 
huge granite sarcophagus, bearing his grotesque 
nam de phniie in large letters, in the village 
cemetery near by. Nearer, and hard by the 
Pittsfield village of fifty years ago, dwelt Her- 
man Melville, who appears often in the Haw- 
thorne correspondence, and who was the author 
of Typee, Omoo, Mardz, Rcdburn, and other 
sea-tales, popular in their day, winning for 
their author two columns in Allibone, and still 



Lenox in Literature 63 

very much appreciated as first-rank stories of 
their kind. In the same place (Pittsfield) 
dwells to-day a much-talked of writer, William 
Stearns Davis, whose promising career opens 
brilliantly. Look off to the south and on the 
summit of the far-away " Dome " is " Sky 
Farm " where the Goodale sisters (Dora and 
Elaine) wrote of "Apple Blossoms," and girded 
themselves with the vigor of their rugged clime 
for the more serious duties of life ; while off 
there to the west nestles a little lake, Queechy, 
just outside the county limits, where Susan 
Warner, the author of The Wide, Wide World 
and Queechy, lived and wrought in such a way 
as to make a very large public wait eagerly for 
her message. 

Look up and down the county and mark 
the oft-frequency of those places where once 
flourished famous schools, — the Berkshire 
Medical College at Pittsfield, and the Maple- 
wood Young Ladies' Institute in the same 
place, the Greylock Institute at South Wil- 
liamstown, the Lenox Academy and Mrs. 
Charles Sedgwick's school for gfirls in Lenox, 
the Reid and Hoffman school in Stockbridge, 
and the South Berkshire Institute at New Marl- 
borough, all of which institutions have quietly 
passed out of existence with no obsequies to 



64 Lenox 

commemorate their once efficient and famous 
services. 

I cannot give the names of all those min- 
isters of Berkshire who have become well 
known in the field of sacred literature from 
Samuel Hopkins and Jonathan Edwards, of 
whom something will be said hereafter, to 
Washington Gladden and Theodore T. Mun- 
ger, who preached in the thriving city under 
the shadow of Greylock, and on to Charles H. 
Parkhurst, who scintillated both light and heat 
on this very mount before he was called to 
New York, I cannot dwell upon the repre- 
sentatives of art, from George Church to 
Barnard and French, the last named just now 
eno-a^ed in buildinor a studio and mansion 
there by Pack-wa-ke, to all of whom Berkshire 
has furnished inspiration, I cannot tell the 
long but interesting story of distinguished 
visitors within the county come to add their 
literary prestige to this and that section in the 
enchanted realm of Berkshire, from abroad 
Mrs, Jameson, Miss Martineau, Dean Stanley, 
Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, and Matthew 
Arnold, and from our own catalogue of wor- 
thies more names than there is space to write. 
It is all one charming story of literary interest, 
aside from scenic charm or the thrillino- march 



Lenox in Literature 65 

of historic events, and many are the books the 
scenes of whose plots are laid in Berkshire, or 
in which scattered notices of the region ap- 
pear. It is to be our task in this chapter to 
reproduce some of those passages. 

And first let us get the view from distant 
"Taghconic Dome" as President Timothy 
Dwight of Yale College saw it one hundred 
and twenty years ago. Dr. Dwight was a 
great traveller and a voluminous writer, re- 
turning like Herodotus to recount tale after 
tale of his journeyings. 

" In the year 1781," he says, " I ascended the loftiest 
summit of this mountain [the Dome], and found a most 
extensive and splendid prospect spread around me. On 
the north rose Saddle mountain, at the head of the 
Hooestennuc Valley at the distance of forty miles. At 
the same distance the Catskill mountains formed on the 
west the boundary of the vast valley of the Hudson ; 
and in the southwest the most northern summit of the 
Highlands. The chain of the Green Mountains on the 
east stretched its long succession of summits from north 
to south a prodigious length, while over them at a dis- 
tance rose the single, solitary point of Mount Tom, and 
farther still at the termination of fifty or sixty miles, 
ascended successively various eminences. Monadnock 
at the distance of seventy miles on the northeast is dis- 
tinctly discernible in a clear day." 

Dr. Dwight in 1798 revisited the region, 
and journeying northward through Great 



66 Lenox 

Barrington he substantiates what we know 
from the Memoirs of Hopkins about the no- 
torious irrehgion then prevaiHng in that village, 
— horse racing the chief business, houses de- 
cayed, unthrift on all sides, the church in ruins 
and a shelter for sheep, having had no pas- 
tor for over thirty years, during and after 
the troublous Revolutionary times. Yet here 
was where the great Hopkins labored, being 
dismissed, after a twenty-five years' pastorate, 
in 1769. Dr. Dwight continues his journey 
over Monument Mountain so called because 
here was buried one of the aborigines, a girl, 
who, disappointed in love, had killed herself by 
leaping off a precipice on the west side, and 
each Indian who passed her grave threw a stone 
upon the place of sepulture, by which custom, 
practised many years, the heap had come to 
assume the proportions of a monument to the 
dead. This distinguished traveller calls at- 
tention to the " Eastern front of ' Monument,' 
a magnificent and awful precipice, formed by 
ragged perpendicular cliffs of white quartz and 
rising immediately west of the road between 
five and six hundred feet " ; and he notices, 
also, en passant, the tremendous geologic con- 
vulsion known as " Ice Glen," described so 
weirdly and vividly by Miss Sedgwick in A 



Lenox in Literature 67 

N'czu England Talc (^1822) and visited annu- 
ally by scores of people. 

Proceeding on his journey President D wight, 
after a short stay in Stockbridge (the In- 
dians had been gone then twelve years), 
comes to Lenox, which he describes as given 
in the chapter on the earlier history of the 
town. 

A monument was unveiled recently on the 
grounds of Yale College to Benjamin Silli- 
man, physicist, the distinguished professor of 
chemistry in that institution from 1802 until 
1853. Dr. Silliman, following the example 
of President Dwight, made a journey in 1819 
through New England and reported what he 
had seen in a volume entitled, Sillinian s Tour 
to QiLebec. Dwight rode ; Silliman's was a 
carriage journey, and I find in the record of his 
travels quite an extended reference to Lenox. 
This has already been given on page 26, and 
is only referred to again to call attention to 
the little bit of local color. Lenox at that 
time was in the beginning of its prolonged 
and friendly contest with Pittsfield for the 
primacy among the towns of the county, and 
it was thought the matter had been settled by 
the erection three years before (18 16) of the 
new county Court-house, now, and since 1874, 



68 Lenox 

the Public Library building, and known as 
Sedorwick Hall. 

This is the edifice Silliman describes, and I 
append here the rest of the reference which 
the distinguished traveller makes to the town. 

" I did not count the houses," he says, " but I should 
think there might be one hundred houses and stores. 
Its population is one thousand, three hundred and ten. 
White marble is often the material of their steps, foun- 
dations and pavements. Our treatment and dinner at 
the inn were such as a reasonable traveller would have 
been very well satisfied with, at a country tavern in 
England. Still probably no small town in England is 
so beautiful as Lenox." 

Professor Silliman is rapturously enthusias- 
tic over the scenery of this Berkshire region, 
even if, in the rather turgid style of Xenophon, 
he measures off the "parasangs" from town 
to town ; and so he passes on his way, seeing 
"the lofty Hoosac with its double summit" 
(Greylock) "on our right." It will be seen 
from the reference to the " inn " of that day, 
which stood upon the same site as the present 
substantial and commodious " Curtis Hotel," 
that this corner in the village has enjoyed for 
nearly if not quite a century a prestige for 
hospitality and the entertainment of distin- 
guished travellers. The present hotel, entirely 



Lenox in Literature 69 

reconstructed within recent years, had for its 
predecessor on the same site a brick structure 
built in 1829 and called "The Berkshire Cof- 
fee-House," and it is specifically that house 
which has the literary associations of great 
names. Mrs. Kemble, even so far back as 
1839, speaks of it as the " Old Red Inn " ; and 
Mrs, Jameson, the English author and the 
intimate friend of Miss Catherine Sedgwick, 
refers, in a letter to the latter, August 20, 
1838, to "the little view of the hills from the 
window of the inn at Lenox where we used to 
sit. 

It would be far from the purpose of this 
chapter to make a complete list of those books 
of description containing scattered references 
to Lenox, or its environment ; yet it would be 
a very grave omission not to see this region 
through the eyes of some of the English visi- 
tors who have from time to time come hither ; 
one of whom, Mrs. Kemble, to whom refer- 
ence has been made, became so enamored 
with Berkshire as to make her residence in 
Lenox for years. The Lenox during the 
period of Mrs. Kemble's sojourn, 1836-53, is 
the subject of many references on the pages 
of her Records of Late7' Life. Mr. Samuel G. 
Ward, American representative of the Baring 



JO Lenox 

Brothers, London, had purchased in 1846 some 
farms near Stockbridge Bowl, thus pioneering 
the way for the creation of vast estates here 
by the lavish and artistic hand of Wealth. 
Other notable purchases followed right away. 
Miss Catherine Sedfjwick was toiline at her 
voluminous task, always the centre of a liter- 
ary coterie attracted to her side, whether in 
New York or here in Lenox, where her home 
was a veritable salon, though perfectly simple 
and informal, graced by the presence of Chan- 
ning, Sumner, Mrs. Kemble, distinguished 
and exiled Italian patriots of 1848, and 
many others. Lenox was being "discovered." 
Charles Sumner writes Dr. Howe, September 
13, 1844, from Lenox, where he is staying with 
his friend Ward : " Last eveninor at the Sedsf- 
wicks' I heard Fanny Kemble read the First 
Act of Macbeth, and sing a ballad." Oliver 
Wendell Holmes writes his mother from Pitts- 
field, August 17, 1849: "To-day I rode my 

little horse to Lenox. Mr. 's place is one 

of the most beautiful spots I ever saw any- 
where ; perfect almost to a miracle." Before 
Mrs. Kemble left the creation of beautiful 
estates had begun; the "inn" was always 
filled to overflowing ; the waning star of Miss 
Sedgwick's literary greatness had commenced 



Lenox in Literature 71 

to set ; Hawthorne and Beecher were here ; 
and with the dignity of court-Hfe at the stated 
periods, the bustle and stir of the county busi- 
ness when the courts were in session, the ap- 
pearance of a student-corps in attendance 
upon the famous classical schools located here, 
Lenox was an altogether different place from 
what it is to-day. 

Some additional references to the Lenox of 
Mrs. Kemble's day are here presented from 
her own writings. In her Records of Later 
Life she says : 

" Being asked by my friends in Lenox to give a public 
reading, it became a question to what purpose the pro- 
ceeds of the entertainment could best be applied. I 
suggested 'the poor of the village,' but 'We have no 
poor ' was the reply, and the sum produced by the read- 
ing was added to a fund which established an excellent 
public library, for though Lenox had no paupers, it had 
numerous intelligent readers among its population." 

It may be that the chief reason there were no 
paupers then was that there was no pauper 
spirit ! Mrs. Kemble also relates how her 

" most admirable friend, Mr. Charles Sedgwick, seriously 
expostulated with me " (her), because she sent some beer 
out to some laborers in the hay-lot " as introducing among 
the laborers of Lenox a mischievous need and delete- 
rious habit till then utterly unknown there; in short my 



72 Lenox 

poor barrel of beer was an offence to the manners and 
morals of the community I lived in, and my meadow was 
mowed upon cold water from the well." 

In all the journeyings of this famous actress 
her heart turns back to the Berkshire town, 
and its mountain environment, " a district," 
she says, " chiefly inhabited by Sedgwicks 
and their belongings," and one wonders which 
delighted her innermost soul the more, the 
scenery or the mental companionship of 
Catherine Sedgwick, The most enthusiastic 
descriptions of the loveliness of the region are 
only rivalled in rapture by her oft-allusions to 
the American woman of letters who was her 
guide to Channing and who was her country- 
woman's (Mrs. Jameson's) friend, as this little 
bit from a letter of Anna Jameson to Cather- 
ine Sedgwick (August 20, 1838) shows: "I 
have known you only to feel how hard it is to 
be without you, dear sunshiny Kate." 

As early as 1843 (October 3d), Mrs. Kemble 
longs for a residence in the Berkshires : 

"You do not know," she writes, "how earnestly I 
desire to live up there. I do believe mountains and 
hills are kindred of mine, — larger and smaller re- 
lations, taller and shorter cousins, for my heart expands 
and rejoices and beats more freely among them, and 
doubtless, in the days which ' I can hardly remem- 



Lenox in Literature 73 

ber ' I was a bear, or a wolf, or at the very least a wild- 
cat, with unlimited range of forest and mountain. . . . 
That cottage by the lake-side haunts me, and to be able 
to realize that day-dream is now certainly as near an ap- 
proach to happiness as I can ever contemplate." 

In London, December 9, 1845, the Berkshire 
picture is before her: 

" My little sketch of Lenox lake lies always open be- 
fore me, and I look at it very often with yearning eyes, 
for the splendid rosy sunsets over the dark-blue moun- 
tain tops, and for the clear and lovely expanse of pure 
waters reflecting both, above all for the white-footed 
streams that come leaping down the steep stairways of 
the hills. I believe I do like places better than people." 

In Rome, May 20, 1846, she remembers Lenox : 

*' The beautiful aspect of this enchanting region re- 
calls the hill country in America that I am so fond of. 
The district of country round Lenox rejoices in a num- 
ber of small lakes (from one hillside one sees five) of a 
few miles in circumference, which, lying in the laps of 
the hills, with fine wooded slopes sweeping down to their 
bright basins, give a peculiar charm to the scenery." 

In another place she writes, " It is the most 
picturesque scenery I have ever seen," and 
after dcscribincr the beauties of landscape 
about Stockbridge and Lenox, lavishes un- 
stinted praise upon the scenic charm " in the 
neighborhood of a small town called Salisbury, 



74 Lenox 

thirty miles from Lenox. This," she continues, 
" is situated in a plain surrounded by moun- 
tains, and upon the same level lie four beauti- 
ful small lakes ; close above this valley rises 
Mount Washington, or as some Swiss charcoal- 
burners, who have emigrated hither, have 
christened it, Mount Righi." The mountain 
referred to here is " The Dome," which stands 
like a sentinel at the southern end of the 
Berkshire country. 

Mrs. Kemblc revelled in all the prodigality 
of rich landscape here, a rare lover of nature, 
oblivious to criticisms upon her singularity as 
she strolled or rode here and there. Charles 
Sumner, who spent some weeks in Pittsfield 
recuperating from a severe illness, writes his 
friend Howe, September ii, 1844: 

"To-morrow I move to Lenox where I sojourn with 
Ward and count much upon the readings of Shakespeare, 
the conversation and society of Fanny Kemble, who has 
promised to ride with me and introduce me to the beau- 
tiful lanes and wild paths of these mountains. She 
seems a noble woman, peculiar, bold, masculine, and un- 
accommodating, but with a burning sympathy with all 
that is high, true, and humane." 

At another time he speaks of riding in Mrs. 
Butler's (Fanny Kemble's) company, who 
" proposed to accompany me back to Pitts- 




■'^¥' 




Fanny Kemhle. 



Lenox in Literature 75 

field. We rode the longest way and I en- 
joyed my companion very much"; and at 
another he and his friend, Mr. Ward, " looked 
on while, in a field not far off, the girls 
and others engaged in the sport of archery. 
Mrs. Butler hit the target in the golden mid- 
dle." Hawthorne, who spent the busiest 
eighteen months of his life in a literary way in 
Lenox, from the spring of 1850 until the 
autumn of 1851, was thrown into the society of 
Mrs. Butler (so far as he, the unsocial man, 
could be thrown into any society), and as we 
see her dash up on easy and familiar terms be- 
fore the " little old red house," reining in her 
fiery steed, — which there is a tradition, here in 
Lenox, she rode a la chevalier, — we may won- 
der if either understood the other, so unlike 
were they in many ways. 

Hawthorne would jump over the fence to 
avoid meeting strangers ; Mrs. Kemble was 
excessively social. Hawthorne tired of the 
scenery ; it grew upon her the more she saw 
it. Julian Hawthorne, writing of the Lenox 
period in his father's life, says she " often rode 
up to the door on her strong black horse, and 
conversed, in heroic phrases, with the inmates 
of the red house." She was a strong person- 
ality, full of kindliness and an "enthusiasm of 



7^ Lenox 

humanity," not In love with her profession, a 
deep thinker on rehgious questions, raptly in 
love with nature, and a writer of most interest- 
ing and readable letters. Her love for the 
Berkshires took the form of the creation of a 
"place" called "The Perch," and since her re- 
moval, though before her death, the town 
named the street on which her place was 
located in her honor. Toward the close of 
her long life she brought out a book, Far 
Azuay and Long Ago, showing that in the 
English home where she passed the evening 
of her days, the memories of a far-off hill- 
country were uppermost. She published in 
1858 a volume of poems, some of which were 
inspired by her Lenox residence. We recog- 
nize the influence of the locale in 

" Greylock, cloud-girdled, from his purple throne 

A shout of gladness sends, 
And up soft meadow slopes, a warbling tone 

The Housatonic blends." 

Of Other English visitors who have written 
about Berkshire we shall not speak so much 
at length. Miss Harriet Martineau made a 
somewhat protracted stay of two years in 
America (1834-36), a small portion of the 
time being spent in the Berkshires, visiting 



Lenox in Literature T] 

Miss Catherine Sedgwick at Stockbridge, 
where the house is still standingr in which 
Catherine was born in 1789. It was here 
Miss Martineauwas entertained in November, 
1834. 

" We have been exquisitely happy in Stockbridge with 
the Sedgwicks. Miss Sedgwick is all I heard of her, 
which is saying everything. . . . Such a country of 
mountain and lakeand towering wood! I was 'Lafayetted* 
as they say to great advantage. All business was sus- 
pended and almost the whole population was busy in 
giving me pleasure and information. We were carried 
to Pittsfield to an annual agricultural assemblage where I 
learned much of the people. Oh! the bliss of not seeing 
a single beggar. ... I have learned more than I 
well know how to stow, at Stockbridge, the unrivalled 
village where the best refinements of the town are 
mingled with the wildest pleasures of the country. I 
never saw so beautiful a company of children as were al- 
ways offering me roses. Miss Sedgwick is the beloved 
and gentle queen of the little community." 

Miss Martineau's tour through America was 
at a critical time so far as politics were con- 
cerned, owing to the divisive and persistent 
question of slavery, and her "impressions" of 
the United States were given to the public in 
a book entitled Society in America, published 
after her return to England and bringing 
down upon its author's head a storm of abuse 
from the press on this side of the Atlantic ; 



jZ Lenox 

but we are grateful for its descriptions of the 
prominent people of the day, and notably of 
Miss Catherine Sedgwick. 

" I remember Miss Sedgwick," writes Harriet Marti- 
neau, " starting back in the path, one day wlien she and 
I were walking beside the sweet Housatonic, and snatch- 
ing her arm from mine when I said, in answer to her 
inquiry what I thought the issue of the controversy must 
be, ' The dissolution of the Union ! ' she cried, ' The 
Union is sacred, and must be preserved at all cost.' " 

There are many interesting references to 
Miss Sedgwick in Miss Martineau's Autobi- 
ography, and to Harriet Martineau in Cather- 
ine Sedgwick's Life and Letters. Harriet 
and Catherine were respectively thirty-three 
and forty-six when they had their " drives to- 
gether or strolled along the sweet Housa- 
tonic" in 1835, but they were too utterly 
dissimilar in many ways to cement an un- 
broken friendship, Catherine's affectionate 
tenderness was misinterpreted for flattery by 
Harriet, and naturally when the younger told 
the older that she " dreaded to receive her 
letters because instead of what I wished to 
hear, I found praise of myself," their corre- 
spondence ceased. Miss Martineau, however, 
had "a great admiration for Miss Sedgwick's 
character," and reviewed the American novel- 



Lenox in Literature 79 

ist's works in the Westminster Reviezv of Octo- 
ber, 1837, particularly praising as " wonderfully 
beautiful " the smaller tales such as Home and 
Live and Let Live. 

It is a more congenial and inspiring friend- 
ship which greets one in the long comradeship 
between Mrs, Jameson and Miss Sedgwick, 
but its value for us here is in its bearing upon 
the subject of this chapter. Catherine Sedg- 
wick returned, in 1839, ^^^ '^'^i^ which Anna 
Jameson made in America in 1837, and among 
the friendships of literary women there are few 
more intense or mutually stimulating. They 
were nearly of the same age, and their corre- 
spondence continuing through the last twenty 
years of Mrs. Jameson's life is a mirror of the 
literary activity of the period. In her London 
home Mrs. Jameson keeps prominently before 
her "the house where Catherine Sedofwick 
was born, and, also, the little view of the hills 
from the window of the inn at Lenox," as she 
writes August 20, 1838. 

Indeed, with the names of Harriet Martineau, 
Anna Jameson, Fanny Kemble, Harriet Beecher 
Stowe, Frederika Bremer, Harriet Hosmer, 
Mary Dewey, and Catherine Sedgwick at one 
and another time not very far apart written into 
the Berkshire story, it will be seen how much 



8o Lenox 

woman has contributed to enhance the literary 
prestige of the region. Miss Bremer was at- 
tracted to the Berkshire country through her 
longfriendshipwith Miss Sedgwick, and Harriet 
Hosmer was a pupil in the " Young Ladies 
School " conducted for many years in Lenox 
by Mrs. Charles Sedgwick and famous in its 
day. Mary Dewey, the daughter of a distin- 
guished Unitarian clergyman. Rev. Orville 
Dewey, D.D., was, like her father, whose 
Life she wrote, born in Sheffield, the earli- 
est settlement in Berkshire County, and was, 
owing to theological and literary affinities, 
thrown much into the society of the Lenox 
coterie. Mrs. Stowe, both through her dis- 
tinguished brother, Henry Ward Beecher, who 
acquired property in Lenox in 1853, ^^^ 
through her son-in-law, Mr. Allen, the rector 
at one time of the Episcopal church in Stock- 
bridge, was an oft-visitor in the region, and 
an amusing i^encont^^e between Fanny Kemble 
and her is told by Mrs. Kemble-Butler in 
her Records. Mrs. Stowe was expressing to 
Fanny Kemble, in a call made by herself and 
daughter upon the actress in Lenox, her belief 
in Planchette, and the undoubted conviction 
she entertained that it was immediately in- 
spired by Satanic influences on account of 



Lenox in Literature 8i 

the "language it uses." " Really," said Mrs. 
Kemble with ill-suppressed laughter ; " may I 
inquire what language it does use ? " " Why," 
returned Mrs. Stowe, with evident reluctance 
to utter the words that followed, " it told us the 
last time we consulted it that we were all a pack 

of d d fools, and we must certainly give up 

having anything to do with it." Mrs. Kemble 
was now convulsed with laughter and ex- 
claimed : " Oh ! I believe in Planchette ! I be- 
lieve in Planchette," but seeingf that Mrs. 
Stowe was offended and shocked by her levity, 
chanofed her tone to seriousness and asked her 
if she really believed the devil had anything to 
do with it. Upon the reiteration of Mrs. 
Stowe's conviction Mrs. Kemble " turned," to 
use her own language, " in boundless amaze- 
ment to the younger lady, whose mischievous 
countenance, with a broad grin upon it, at 
once settled all my doubts as to the devilish 
influence under which Planchette had spoken 
such home truths to her family circle !" 

It would be interesting to pursue this digres- 
sion upon the literary women whose names are 
a part of the Berkshire story, to associate still 
further with the loveliness of the reunion here- 
abouts many others, like Rose Hawthorne 
Lathrop, author of Memories of Hawthorne 



82 Lenox 

(1897), who was born in the " Httle red house" 
her father occupied in 1850-51 ; Mrs. Sigour- 
ney, whose poem on " Stockbridge Bowl " is 
worth preserving, and Mrs. Charles Sedgwick 
whose husband was Catherine's brother, and 
whose Talks with My Pupils, published in 
1862, was the outcome of her tender and ad- 
visory relations with the young ladies who 
resorted for thirty years to her school here in 
Lenox from all parts of the country. Mrs. 
Sedgwick christened her school a " character- 
factory " and such she assiduously strove to 
make it. Her book is really a collection of 
most stimulatinof "heart-talks" which I am 
sure any young lady of the present would find 
extremely profitable and fascinating reading. 
I cannot forbear giving one reference from 
this book to the relieious character of Mrs. 
Kemble-Butler, and any one who has read her 
Records of Later Life will have received the 
same profound impression concerning this 
actress, showing that histrionism and moral 
earnestness are not necessarily antagonistic. 

" Mrs. Kemble, the great revealer of Shoakespeare," 
writes Mrs. Sedgwick, " once said to me, that it was with 
Shakespeare as with the Bible, she never opened it with- 
out finding something new. And, in illustration, she 
quoted a line in Romeo and Juliet, which had that day 
particularly attracted her attention, in which Juliet calls 



Lenox in Literature 83 

Romeo ' lover, husband, friend,' making the last epithet 
the culmination of all the rest. . . . That word 
FRIEND is a glorious old Saxon word. Do all you can to 
illustrate its meaning." 

The name of another great actress, Char- 
lotte Cushman, belongs to the Lenox story. 
In the year 1875, after her hfe work on the 
stage had been completed. Miss Cushman 
came, in rather enfeebled health, to this moun- 
tain village, where she had purchased a little 
cottaore with the intention of makino- it her 
summer home. She was not permitted to en- 
joy it, however, more than one summer, as she 
died February 18, 1876, yet the house she oc- 
cupied is still known as the " Charlotte Cush- 
man cottage." 

I am sure this reference to the women who 
have entwined Lenox with the literary world 
would be very incomplete if no mention were 
made of Mrs. Burton Harrison, who for many 
years has been a summer resident in this moun- 
tain village and who makes frequent allusions 
in her books to Lenox, as a resort, and to the 
enchanting scenic beauty of the region. Lately 
another woman distinguished in letters, Mrs. 
Edith Wharton, has become enamored of the 
Berkshire country, and after a few years' resi- 
dence in Lenox is erecting here a country-seat, 



84 Lenox 

beautifully located near Laurel Lake, and look- 
ing off upon the Hoosacs and the Tyringham 
Pass. Indeed, it maybe said incidentally, this 
section of the town is full of literary associa- 
tions. North of Mrs. Wharton's on the high 
ground rising towards Lenox village stood the 
home of Fanny Kemble, called by her "The 
Perch," and still so called ; farther round to 
the east, overlooking the same lake and on the 
crest of a hill, was the Henry Ward Beecher 
place, where by a turn of the eyeball that 
noted preacher said he could command Grey- 
lock and the Dome ; adjoining the old Beecher 
place is " Coldbrooke," the summer residence 
of James Barnes, the war-correspondent and 
writer ; coming nearer the lake is the country- 
place of the late John O. Sargent, the dis- 
tinofuished Horatian scholar and brother of 
Epes Sargent, both of whom enjoyed friend- 
ships in the innermost circles of American let- 
ters ; and across the lake five miles distant in 
the ancient town of Tyringham is Richard 
Watson Gilder's side-hill farm, where the poet 
looks northward to the Lenox church over a 
pleasing prospect, and westward upon " The 
Shadow Bridge," which each afternoon spans 
the intervale between him and Bear Mountain 
opposite. 



Lenox in Literature 85 



Returning then from this digression con- 
cerning the Hterary women whose names are 
associated with Lenox and its environment, 
we recur once more to what other EngUsh 
travellers have said concerning Berkshire. 
Charles Kingsley was here in 1874 and com- 
pared its forests and streams to " the best parts 
of the Eifel and Black Forest." Dean Stanley 
was for some time the guest of Cyrus W. 
Field, Esq., in Stockbridge, during the autumn 
of 1878, and he writes to friends in England: 

" I am extremely glad I did not lose this place. It 
is a village buried among the Berkshire hills, the scene 
of the first Indian missions, the burial-place of the 
Indians of this part of America, the residence of the 
great Calvinist, Jonathan Edwards, the birth, and 
the burial-place of this family of the Fields." 

And we mieht add that no account of the 
literary traditions of Berkshire could be writ- 
ten without assigning a large place to this very 
distinguished family. In the village church at 
Stockbridge Dean Stanley preached a sermon 
in which with utter nobility of soul and large- 
ness of vision he recognized the good there 
was in Edwards's "hard system." "Even in 
the most unlovely of theologians," the gener- 
ous-minded Dean of Westminster Abbey said 
in the sermon referred to. 



86 Lenox 

" whether in Geneva or Massachusetts, there is still 
something to invigorate and to stimulate, when we re- 
flect that they were trying to fortify the eternal princi- 
ples of truth and righteousness against the temptations 
which beset us all." 

Edwards's Freedom of the Will, which Profes- 
sor Allen says was " one of the literary sensa- 
tions of the eighteenth century," was written 
in Stockbridge and published in 1754 and is 
admittedly one of the mightiest products of 
the American intellect. The house where it 
was composed should have been a literary 
shrine always, no matter to what extent the- 
ology may have reacted from the older type. 
Few towns in America can boast two such 
Meccas for all literary pilgrims as the house 
where Hawthorne wrote his House of the Seven 
Gables in 185 i, and the house where Jonathan 
Edwards wrote the Freedom of the IVill a 
hundred years earlier — yet the former was 
burned down, and the latter torn down. It is 
certainly to be hoped that both these sites will 
be fittingly marked. Such a monument as 
that to the Indians, for example, in Stock- 
bridge, a simple column of field-stone, derives 
new sacredness and charm from the fact that 
here Dean Stanley stood reverently, remarking 
to one near, " The grave of the Stockbridge 



Lenox in Literature 87 

Indians, the friends of our fathers, places me 
on the boundary of those days when the sav- 
age and the civihzed man still met, like Goth 
and Roman, in the varied vicissitudes of peace 
and war." 

We must pass over with the merest men- 
tion the names of other illustrious English 
travellers who have at various times been 
guests in Lenox, or the vicinity, and who by 
their presence here have added to the prestige 
of the locale,— \.ord Chief Justice Coleridge, 
the guest of John E. Parsons of Lenox, Lord 
Kelvin, the guest of George Westinghouse, 
Esq., of Lenox, " Ian Maclaren," and Samuel 
Chisholm, Lord Provost of Glasgow University, 
the guests of John Sloane, Esq., of Lenox, 
the Princess Augusta and her husband, a dis- 
tinguished educator of Germany, guests of 
Dr. and Mrs. F. P. Kinnicutt. Our purpose is 
a simple one, to gather together the recorded 
descriptions of the region on the pages of lit- 
erature, and so we will offer a few references 
to the hill-country of Western Massachusetts 
from the Letters of Jllatthew Arnold. Here 
is a letter dated Stockbridge, Mass., July 8, 
1886: 

" This is a pretty place with many hills of 2000 feet, 
and one of 3500. 'L'hcrc are a great many peojile in the 



88 Lenox 

neighborhood, some of them nice. The country is 
pleasing but not to be compared to Westmoreland. It 
is wider and opener, and neither hills nor lakes are so 
effective. The villas are very pretty. The American 
wooden villa with its great piazza where the family live 
in hot weather, is the prettiest villa in the world. And 
the trees are everywhere ; indeed they cover the hills 
too much, to the exclusion of the truly mountainous 
effects which we get from the not higher mountains of 
Langdale." 

Again in a letter to Mr. Grant Duff, dated 
Stockbridge, Mass., July 29, 1886, Matthew 
Arnold says : 

" This Berkshire county in Massachusetts where I 
now am, which the Americans extol, is not to be com- 
pared to the Lakes of Scotland. The heat is great in 
summer, and in winter the cold is excessive. But the 
flowers and trees are delightfully interesting " ; 

and after enumerating the varieties of wild 
flowers he had found in strolls and drives, all 
of which he calls by their botanical names, he 
continues : 

" What would I give to go in your company for even 
one mile on any of the roads out of Stockbridge ! The 
trees too delight me. I had no notion what maples 
were, thinking only of our pretty hedgerow shrub at 
home, but they are as, of course, you know, trees of the 
family of our sycamore but more imposing than our 
sycamore. The American elm I cannot prefer to the 
English, but still I admire it extremely." 



Lenox in Literature 89 

As autumn approaches our distinguished critic 
becomes rather more reconciled to the cHmate, 
which had rather accentuated the heart-trou- 
ble from which he suffered. August 24th he 
writes : 

" This place [Stockbridge] has becoma very enjoy- 
able. I see at last what an American autumn which 
they so praise is and it deserves the praise given it. I 
wish you could have been with us yesterday, that is, if 
you are not nervous in a carriage, for the roads look 
impossible in places and the hills are awful. We went to 
a lake called Long Lake near which we could see to the 
south a wide valley with the Dome and the other Ta- 
conic Mountains in the sunset at the end of it. We 
were perpetually stopping the carriage in the woods 
through which we drove, the flowers were so attractive. 
You have no notion how beautiful the asters are till you 
see them." 

Three days later (August 27th) he writes 
Charles Eliot Norton : 

" I like Berkshire more and more The Dome is a 
really imposing and beautiful mass ; I have seen it 
now from many points and in many lights, and with 
ever increasing admiration. I was shown the Green 
River yesterday, the river immortalized by the American 
Wordsworth, /. e., Bryant. But the Dome, at any rate, 
will live in my admiring memory." 

On Matthew Arnold's return to England he 
writes to his dauLjhtcr in America : 



90 Lenox 

" You cannot think how often Stockbridge and its 
landscape come into my mind. None of the cities 
could attach me, not even Boston ; but I could get 
fond of Stockbridge." 

But if Arnold could not forgive Berkshire its 
climate for the sake of its scenery, it is at 
least admissible and not at all retaliatory to 
entertain the thought that an Englishman's 
meteorological tastes may be perverted. Mrs. 
Kemble-Butler became so converted to Berk- 
shire weather as to taunt her English friends 
with their leaden skies and ceaseless drizzles, 
and she chuckles as she writes from Lenox to 
some one in England: "What a good place 
you are in to wear out umbrellas ! " Indeed, 
Mrs Jameson when she reaches England is 
facetious enough to write as follows to Gather- 
ine Sedgwick : 

" We are having real ' English weather,' leaden sky, 
fog and a drizzling rain. It reminds me of one of 
Marryat's stories of an old quartermaster who, returning 
from a three years' voyage to the East Indies, and ap- 
proaching the English shore in weather such as this, 
looked up into the dull sky and hazy atmosphere, and 
sniffing up the damp air and buttoning his pea-jacket 
over his chest, exclaimed with exultation, ' Ay, this is 
something like, — none of your d d blue skies here ! ' " 

It is not my purpose to collect every "scrap 
and scription " of what has been written about 



Lenox in Literature 91 

Lenox, or its environment, in literature, yet 
we may turn now from this incomplete pre- 
sentation of the region as seen through other 
eyes to a close-range view of this state, rather 
than county, of Berkshire, for walled in on 
every side its very isolation has intensified 
a feeling of unity. Berkshire is an entity by 
itself rather than a part of something else. It 
emits like the diamond from its many facets 
an interior brilliancy no matter on which side 
you study it. What has Berkshire not given 
to the literatures of patriotism, religion, edu- 
cation, romance, and poetry ! What untold 
and incalculable literary inspirations has not 
the Berkshire college in Williamstown, which 
celebrated eight years ago Its centennial, cre- 
ated and fostered ! What a student-corps, 
destined to play a leading part in statesman- 
ship, religion, education, and literature, has 
had its spirit baptized with the stimulating 
beauties and glories of a Berkshire environ- 
ment ! If we turn the pages of the educa- 
tional literature of the nineteenth century in 
America a distinctively Berkshire name stands 
out luminously and conspicuously, — Mark Hop- 
kins, President of Williams Collep-e, and con- 
nected with the institution for almost sixty 
years, a Thomas Arnold among teachers. If 



92 Lenox 

we turn the pages of our early patriotic litera- 
ture, you cannot read far before you come upon 
another Berkshire name, Major-General John 
Paterson of Lenox, the friend, counsellor, and 
comrade of General Washington throughout 
that long Revolutionary struggle. There are 
many references to Lenox in the Life of Gen- 
eral Paterson by the late Professor Egleston. 
The literature of American patriotism has no 
brighter or more thrilling pages than the story 
of Bennington and the Berkshire troops, with 
" Parson " Allen of the First Church, Pitts- 
field, filled with both the ministering and mili- 
tant spirit ; the story of the non-importation 
compacts, one of which, the original, yellowed 
with age and bearing the signatures of many 
yeomen, hangs as we have said, on the walls 
of the Lenox Library, a thing of pride and 
inspiration to their descendants ; the march 
and countermarch, campaigns and sufferings 
of the Berkshire regiment, many of whom 
were Lenox men inspired by General Pater- 
son's enthusiasm, as told in Field and Hol- 
land and the biographies of distinguished 
soldiers in all the American wars from Pater- 
son to Bartlett. If we turn to the liter- 
ature of relieion we are confronted at once 
with some of the most massive works on the- 



Lenox in Literature 93 

ology the American intellect has yet produced, 
— a System of Divinity, written by Samuel 
Hopkins, who was for twenty-five years the 
pastor of the church down yonder in Great 
Barrington, and who in this theological work, 
published after leaving Berkshire, moulds 
New England thought for nearly four genera- 
tions. To Jonathan Edwards's celebrated trea- 
tise on the Will we have referred. Those 
seven years of Edwards's life in Stockbridge 
were busier and more productive in a literary 
way than any other heptade in his life. Other 
theological works by West, Catlin, and others 
show the temper and calibre of that olden 
ministry. It would weary the patience of the 
reader to recount here all the contributions to 
religious literature by the Berkshire pulpit. 
In West's Life of Samuel Hopkins, and in 
Hyde's Life of Stephen West, as in all the 
" Lives " of Edwards, the story between the 
lines which interests us here is that of the re- 
gion. A complete bibliographical list of all 
the theological works, biographies, sermons, 
and addresses, by those who have at one time 
and another had a more or less prolonged con- 
nection with the Berkshire pulpit, from Ed- 
wards and Hopkins to Munger and Gladden 
and Parkhurst, would include many noteworthy 



94 Lenox 

contributions to American religious literature. 
I have re-examined much of this material for 
the Berkshire story, and much of it has been 
interwoven, or will be, in the progress of these 
chapters. One very rare book, Memoirs of 
HoiLsatumiuk Tndm7is,hy Samuel Hopkins (of 
Springfield), I have only found copies of in 
Boston and Springfield, and it brings one in the 
most realistic way face to face with Indian life, 
beliefs, and customs in vStockbridge one hundred 
and sixty-seven years ago in its truly aboriginal 
cast. Here we see the primitive settlements, 
with Captain Konkapot at Wnahktukook 
(Stockbridge), and Lieutenant Umpachene at 
Skatekook (Sheffield), farther down the river, 
and now and then Yokun appears on the 
scene ; we see oreat meetiuQ-s between the 
Indians and the State Commissioners taking 
place with the giving of belts of wampum; we 
see Sergeant moving about in the picture, now 
preaching in their own tongue to the blank- 
eted redskins, now going with them on their 
protracted expeditions into the sugar -bush, 
where they seem to have been the first to 
have discovered the art of making maple- 
sugar, and now busy with the scheme that 
rested on his heart, the industrial education 
of the Indian, thus anticipating by a century 



Lenox in Literature 95 

and a half Hampton, Carlisle, and Tuskcgee. 
We read on the pages of this old chronicler 
the rather astonishinor information that " Ser- 
geant was taken with the intermitting [s/c] 
fever the common distemper of all new-comxcrs 
to Housatunnuk " ; certainly hygienic condi- 
tions are better now and no country is more 
noted for its salubrity. We also read in this 
ancient memoir that 

" the large heap of stones, I suppose ten cartloads, 
on the way to Wnahktukook (Stockbridge) have been 
thrown together by Indians in passing without know- 
ing the end of it, only they (the Indians) say their 
fathers used to do so and they do it because it was the 
custom of their fathers." 

I cannot believe that Dr. Hopkins understood 
correctly in this visit of 1734 what later and 
uniformly has been given as the reason for 
this collection of stones, viz., to mark a grave, 
— hence " Monument " Mountain. 

But let us come to some of the other o-feat 
names in American literature which are asso- 
ciated with the Berkshire picture. Miss 
Catherine Sedgwick and Nathaniel Hawthorne 
will be noticed in separate chapters. Their 
names are written imperishably into the re- 
gion. We have already seen in this chapter 
the brilliant coterie of women whom Miss 



96 Lenox 

Sedgwick attracted to the Berkshires ; and in 
Hawthorne's Note-books the records of the 
visits of eminent Hterati are faithfully kept. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes is a frequent caller; 
also Herman Melville. Here are other entries : 
"E. P. Whipple called"; "J. T. Headley 
called" ; "J. R. Lowell called in the evening" ; 
" Walked to Scott's pond [Laurel Lake] with 
Ellery Channing." Indeed, with Hawthorne's 
American Note-books in hand the Berkshire 
landscape not only possesses the charm of re- 
flecting from all its varied points and angles 
his descriptions but is peopled with congenial 
literary spirits. It is enough to say, in reply 
to the oft-assertion that Hawthorne's house 
was in Stockbridge, that while technically that 
is true the novelist could flip a stone over the 
line into Lenox, wrote " Lenox " in his note- 
books, went to the Lenox post-office daily for 
his mail, and was identified in every way with 
Lenox. 

Stand with me a moment, then, on the site 
of the "little red house," and let me call up 
some other sacred literary associations of the 
region, as our eyes rest here and there on 
the varied points of interest. Remember that 
the spot where we are standing is itself 
redolent with the inspirations of Hawthorne's 



Lenox in Literature 97 

genius and impregnated with the memories of 
his great Hterary achievements. " Stockbridge 
Bowl " Hes down at our feet, beyond are the 
mountains, and behind us to the right rises 
" Bald Head," while to the left, also in the 
rear, the ground continually ascending is 
crowned at its summit by the ancient town of 
Lenox, with its many villas peeping out from 
their eminences and over all the gilded belfry- 
tower of the village church looming up behind. 
It Is a spectacle of rare beauty profaned only 
by eyes that cannot see its loveliness. " Monu- 
ment" in front has its separate delight as in 
the Note-book, chanorinor from orreen to red 
and from red to white to suit the seasons, now 
"enveloped in mist," now " enwreathed with 
cloud," now a " headless sphinx wrapped 
in a Persian shawl." Clad in the investiture 
of Hawthorne's poetic conceptions, it greets 
with reflected Q^lare from its " beetlingf cliffs" 
the first pencillings of dawn, and " floats in a 
sea of chrysolite and opal " at close of day. 
Hawthorne's genius, however, is not the only 
one which comes back to us from its rugged 
sides and yonder picturesque and entrancing 
landscape. William Cullen Bryant, who was 
born in Cummington, in the neighboring 
county of Hampshire, November 3, i 794, came 



98 Lenox 

to Great Barrington in 1816, and opening 
there a law - office passed the ensuing six 
years in the Berkshire village. Here he 
was "town clerk," here married. Though 
his earliest consciousness of poetic power 
had been awakened before coming hither, 
yet its acknowledgment by the world was 
delayed through his own modesty in making 
public the productions of his genius. Antici- 
pating his friend Catherine Sedgwick in the 
neighboring village of Stockbridge, who in 1822 
literally "awoke one morning and found her- 
self famous" through the appearance of her 
first novel, A Neiv England Tale, Bryant by 
the publication of Thaiiatopsis in 181 7 and 
Lines to a Water foivl in 1818 evoked in- 
stant recognition. It was impossible for Great 
Barrington to keep him from the larger field 
his talents demanded, and the poet removed 
to New York. But his poems Green River 
and Monument Mountain are inseparably and 
imperishably associated with his Berkshire 
residence ; the former the Waumpa-nick-se- 
poot of the Housatonic Indians, and the latter 
their Maus-wa-see-khi. Green River reflects, 
as the tranquil waters the sylvan or pastoral 
scenes along its banks, the inner questionings 
of the poet 



Lenox in Literature 99 

"... forced to drudge for the dregs of men 
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen," 

who was beginning to find the prosaic duties 
of town clerk irksome. 

"Yet fair as thou art, thou shun'st to glide 
Beautiful stream! by the village side; 
But windest away from haunts of men, 
To quiet valley and shaded glen, — 
And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill 
Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still. 
Lonely — save when, by thy rippling tides. 
From thicket to thicket the angler glides; 
Or the simpler comes with basket and book 
For herbs of power on thy banks to look; 
Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me 
To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee 

But I wish that fate had left me free 
To wander these quiet haunts with thee 
Till the eating cares of earth should depart 
And the peace of the scene pass into my heart." 

Monument Mountain is the exquisitely beauti- 
ful recital of the Indian legend of a maiden 
who, crossed in love, because she could, not 
marry her cousin, madly and fatally threw her- 
self from its "hanging crags" and "bare old 
clifTs"— 

Hugh pillars that in middle heaven upbear 
Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark 
With the thick moss of centuries, and there 

L.cro. 



loo Lenox 

Of chalkj'-whiteness where the thunderbolt 
Has splintered them." 

Look again from the " boudoir-window of 
the red house " at the " round head of the 
dome of Taconic " in the far distance, gener- 
ally, says Hawthorne, "a dark blue unvaried 
mountain-top." Then follow around to the 
right the miles of "intervening hill-country" 
until the eye rests on "Bald Head" rising 
directly back of us, and then read those descrip- 
tive preludes in TJic ]Voiidci' Book for CJiildren. 
It is a reoion which oives back to us the 
greatest American novelist, Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne, and as we stand looking- down at 
" Stockbridge Bowl," a burnished mirror at 
our feet, how thronging the literary associa- 
tions ! — the change of its name from old Mah- 
keenac to " Stockbridge Bowl " by Catherine 
Sedgwick ; the poem of which it is the subject, 
" high set among the breezy hills, a classic 
vase," by Mrs. Sigourney ; and finally the 
walks of Hawthorne with his children across 
its "adamantine surface" in the winter season. 
At the foot of " Monument" as the eye turns 
to the left is " Ice Glen " where Crazy Bet in 
A Neiu E7igland Talc finds in its wildness 
congenial society for her disordered intellect, 
and whence she roams to the " very top of 



Lenox in Literature loi 

Taghcounick." Farther around but hidden by 
the near shoulder of " Rattlesnake " is the 
Tyringham valley, where last summer (1901) 
an ex-President of the United States had 
his country-seat, adjoining that of his friend, 
the poet, Richard Watson Gilder, whose 
Rhyme of Tyrmghavi and Evening in Tyring- 
ham Valley are in rhythm, description, and 
depth of feeling in Mr. Gilder's best vein. I 
may say, in passing, that this very spot where 
we are standing, the site of Hawthorne's " lit- 
tle red house," Mr. Gilder thinks should be 
appropriately marked, and in a letter to the 
author expressed his preference that the me- 
morial should take the form of an exedra. It 
is a focal spot where Holmes and Lowell and 
Hawthorne stood and joined hands with Bry- 
ant across the little lake, while lesser workmen 
in the guild of letters oft-visitors hither range 
themselves around, and up from the village-on- 
the-plain just over the brow of yonder knoll 
come the memories of one of the most illus- 
trious families in this country of ours, the dis- 
tinguished family of the Rev. David Dudley 
Field, pastor of the Stockbridge church (1819- 
37), one of whom, a well-known and volumi- 
nous contributor to the literature of travel, the 
Rev. Henry M. Field, D.D., is now enjoying 



I02 Lenox 

his respite after a busy "day's work" in his 
loved Berkshire village. 

My effort to trace the literary thread in the 
Berkshire story, so imperfectly done, is nearly 
finished. William Ellery Channing spent sev- 
eral weeks in Lenox, a guest at the Berkshire 
Coffee -House (now Curtis Hotel), though 
most of the time in the company of the Sedg- 
wicks, during the summer of 1842, his last 
summer on earth, and the last public address 
he ever gave was delivered August ist in the 
village church on the hill. This period of his 
Memou'-s abounds in the most extravagant 
praise of the Berkshire environment, the 
charming informality and sweet dignity of the 
life at the Sedewicks', the " fine sio;hts " and 
"pleasant excursions," and above all the 
liberty-loving spirit which a mountain-country 
created. He calls it all "truly Elysian " and 
says again and again it was the " happiest sum- 
mer of his life." The occasion of the address 
from which we have taken a local reference 
(see p. 9) was the anniversary of emancipation 
in the West Indies and of Channing at the 
time of its delivery there are many beauti- 
ful memorabilia in the Memoirs of Channing, 
and in Catherine Sedgwick's Life and Letters. 
Mrs. Charles Sedgwick says : " I shall never 




J; 






IT] S 



Lenox in Literature 103 

forget Dr. Channing's appearance in the pulpit 
that day. His countenance was full of spirit- 
ual beauty and he looked like one inspired." 

Another distinguished preacher whose mem- 
ory is imperishably intertwined with the 
literary traditions of Lenox is Henry Ward 
Beecher, and one of his best-known books, 
Star Papers, is a Berkshire nature-study. Mr. 
Beecher acquired property in Lenox in 1853, 
and thence on for a few summers took his 
vacations in these tip-top eyries of the Berk- 
shire hills. Previous to his Berkshire sojourn 
he had been takingr his annual outinof at Salis- 
bury, on the south side of Taghconic Dome, 
but in the summer of 1853 he goes prospect- 
ing into the hill-country for a summer home. 
As he passes through Great Barrington he 
feels that " it is one of those places which one 
never enters without wishing never to leave ; 
it is a place to be desired as a summer resi- 
dence," but on reaching Stockbridge he writes : 

" I came near purchasing the old house of Dr. West 
for a summer-home; it is located on the northern ridge 
where one sees the Housatonic winding, in great cir- 
cuits, through the valley and the horizon piled and ter- 
raced with mountains." 

Mr. Beecher adds, as he passes through Stock- 
bridge, " an excellent hotel is kept and is 



I04 Lenox 

usually well filled in summer with refugees 
from the arid city." Lenox, however, lured 
the rider on, rising every now and then to 
*' overlook the bold prospect," and here he 
confesses himself captivated by the "singular 
purity and exhilarating effects of its air and 
by the beauty of its mountain scenery. One 
would hardly seek another home in summer, if 
he should spend July or October in Lenox." 
I am not going to weary the reader with the 
vivid descriptions of Berkshire scenery or 
spread out the pastoral idylls in prose which 
everywhere abound throughout the Star Pa- 
pers, showing how thoroughly Mr. Beecher's 
poetic temperament, which he says he received 
from his mother, was en rapport with the 
region. 

I have not tried to make a list of distin- 
guished literati who have from time to time 
sojourned for a longer or a shorter period in 
Lenox. Such a list would include nearly 
every one of prominence in American letters. 
It is quite enough to add, in conclusion, that 
Lenox and its environment are becoming 
known through specific books on the Berkshire 
country. Catherine Sedgwick wove the scenes 
and the people of her native region into 
some of her stories, and we have already al- 



Lenox in Literature 105 

liided to the part Berkshire plays in Haw- 
thorne's Wonder Book for Children. Very 
lately two books have appeared, John Cole- 
man Adams's Nature Studies in Berkshire, a 
charming prose-poem devoted exclusively to 
the natural beauty of the region, and Edward 
Bellamy's Duke of Stockbridge. Mrs. Burton 
Harrison in Leaves from the Diary of Ruth 
Marchmont, Spinster, deals rather with social 
Lenox, yet she makes her "spinster" ardent 
in praise of the scenic beauty. 

" Some of the views from the verandas of this house 
where I am staying," writes Ruth, " are like Turner's 
best canvases in point of rich, soft, luminous color. 
I do not wonder that wealthy, leisurely folk come 
here to linger away from New York and Boston until 
nearly Christmas-time. The air of the place, the 
houses and the entertainments are more quiet and 
mellow than anything in Newport or Bar Harbor. 
The inevitable dinners and luncheons go on just as in 
the other resorts named, but one comes in to dress for 
them after rides and drives into the very fastnesses of 
Nature, through shady, moss-carpeted woods amid a rain 
of tinted leaves, or upon good roads high among the 
hills looking over miles of peaceful rural country. . . . 
There is more land enclosed here, for purposes of pleas- 
ure, around the houses, ihan in most places of resort I 
know; and I dare say that, after all, is what gives Lenox 
its air of undeniable good-breeding and reserve." 

It fits into this reference to country-houses in 



io6 Lenox 

the Berkshire resort to give a description of 
one from another author, Charles Dudley 
Warner, who has brought Lenox into his 
story, A Little Joztrney around the World. 

" The Arbuser cottage at Lenox was really a magnifi- 
cent villa. Richardson had built it. At a distance it 
had the appearance of a medieval structure with its low 
doorways, picturesque gables, and steep roofs, and in 
its situation on a gentle swell of green turf backed by 
native forest-trees it imparted to the landscape an ances- 
tral tone which is much valued in these days. But near 
to, it was seen to be mediaevalism adapted to the sunny 
hospitality of our climate, with generous verandas and 
projecting balconies shaded by gay awnings, and within 
spacious, open to the breezes, and from its broad windows 
offering views of lawns and flower-beds and ornamental 
trees, of a great sweep of pastures, and forests and min- 
iature lakes, with graceful and reposeful hills on the 
horizon." 

There are other references in Mr, Warner's 
book to Lenox — mostly to social Lenox, a 
theme which appears and reappears in Robert 
Grant's J^ace to Face ; and there are other 
books, of lesser worth, where we thread our 
way through familiar Berkshire scenes. 

Is it any wonder then that a Berkshire man 
finds it impossible to speak of his country in 
anything else than the language of exaggera- 
tion ? It certainly is not the least charm about 



Lenox in Literature 



107 



Lenox, and its environment in the Berkshire 
hills, that the whole country hereabouts is 
associated with some of the mightiest intel- 
lects and most graceful writers America has 
produced. 








III 



CATHERINE MARIA SEDGWICK: HER 
MESSAGE AND HER WORK 

THE fate of the popular novelist is pathetic : 
like some rare flower, radiant and redo- 
lent, yet after it is "pressed," its beauty faded, 
its fragrance departed, its distorted form brit- 
tle and ready to drop to pieces, — a breath al- 
most, and it is o-one. Thousands and hundreds 
of thousands of readers in our own and other 
lands literally hung on Miss Sedgwick's pen 
during the long period of her literary creative- 
ness, lasting about thirty-six years, and waited 
eagerly for her books to appear ; now she is 
scarcely read, and only faintly known, more 's 
the pity ! A pioneer in American literature, 
a voluminous writer of novels, perhaps a score 
in all, and short tales, the intimate friend of 
the leading thinkers in many countries besides 
her own, a moralist who never loses sight of 
the highest ideals, a keen observer of life and 

io8 



Catherine Maria Sedg'wick 109 



of the manners and customs of her own times, 
a passionate lover of nature and thoroughly 
en rapport with the scenic fascinations of her 
native Berkshire, Miss Catherine Sedgwick 
needs to make no apology to the present age 
for that very natural liking we all have to be 
remembered, but deserves, on the contrary, to 
be perpetually enshrined in her appropriate 
niche in the world's great Temple of Litera- 
ture. 

Edmund Gosse has perhaps rightly said 
of eighteenth-century English novelists that 
the names of three only stand in the front 
rank : Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett ; but 
who ever reads their works to-day outside 
of the class-room ? Defoe's Robinson Critsoe 
(1719), Swift's Gullivers Travels (1726), and 
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and 
one or two other tales by English writers of 
that century may be found in the book-stalls 
to-day. Smollett's Peregritte Pickle (1751), 
Fielding's Tom Jones (1749), Johnson's Ras- 
selas (1759), Sterne's Tristram Shandy 
(1761) and Sentimental Journey (1768), com- 
plete the list of English works of fiction which 
may with any fairness be said to have retained 
their hold on the reading-public, albeit a very 
faint and possibly weakening one. Literary 



no Lenox 

immortality is not easily won. Catherine Sedg- 
wick belongs to another century, — the nine- 
teenth ; and one would not be justified in placing 
her with the great immortals, but certainly she 
takes a foremost place among the women who 
have during these last hundred years wrought 
at the "forge of thought," — Miss Edgeworth, 
Jane Austen, Miss Mitford, Miss Craik-Mu- 
lock, Miss Martineau, Mrs, Jameson, Miss 
Strickland, Mrs. Sigourney, Miss Miihlbach, 
Miss Kirkland, Mrs, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
Miss Marian Evans (Geo, Eliot), Mme. Du- 
devant (Geo. Sand), Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 
Mrs. Oliphant, Mrs. Prentiss, Mrs. Alcott, 
Amelia E. Barr, ct nniltcE alice. Possibly I 
have mentioned some names in this list of 
female writers, once splendid and potent, 
names to conjure by, now dimmed and for- 
gotten ; yet what of that ? They rendered a 
real service in their day. Have they no claims 
on us for that ? 

Catherine Maria Sedgwick shares with 
Cooper and Irving the place of pioneers in 
American fiction , Irvinof findino^ his materials 
in the Dutch region along the Hudson ; 
Cooper his in the red man's wigwam and war- 
path ; and Miss Sedgwick hers in the simple, 
rustic scenes of New Engrland life. Each was 



Catherine Maria Sedgwick 



III 



oriorinal in the field chosen, and the first to 
enter it ; therefore a sort of prototype of all 
the rest who have gleaned after them, as Mrs. 
Stowe later was the first to enter our great 
Southern section and portray its life. These 
foundation writers deserve to be recalled for 
what they did. Irving's grave at Sleepy Hol- 
low is the shrine of literary pilgrims, as the 
vandal-hands of those who have chipped its 
slab attest ; Cooper's overlooking Glimmer- 
glass and hard by the church where he wor- 
shipped is another ; but someway I greatly fear 
Catherine Sedgwick's at Stockbridge misses 
this grateful incense of the remembrance of 
her countrymen. i\nd yet her novels, a score 
or more, served in their way as distinct a pur- 
pose as either of those " immortals," were 
quite as popular in England as they were in 
America, passed through edition after edition 
and into translations in French, Italian, Ger- 
man, and Spanish, and were reviewed by such 
magazines here as the North American, and on 
the other side as the London Quarterly, Athe- 
71CBU771, and Westminster. The distinguished 
Miss Mitford writes Miss Sedg^wick from Ene- 
land (September 6, 1830), when our American 
novelist was still in the beeinninor of her liter- 
ary career, this very graceful tribute : 



112 Lenox 

" I want to express my strong feelings of obligation 
for Redwood and A Neiv England Tale. . . ." 
" Cooper," Miss Mitford continues, " is certainly, next 
to Scott, the most popular novel-writer of the age. 
Washington Irving enjoys a high and fast reputation; 
the eloquence of Dr. Channing if less widely is perhaps 
more deeply felt; and a lady tvhom I need not name takes 
her place amongst these great men as Miss Edgeworth 
does among our Scotts and Chalmerses "; and Miss 
Mitford adds, " your novels and those of Cooper will 
make American literature known and valued in Eng- 
land." 

Let us try then to gain a nearer view of this 
first female novelist of America, — first certainly 
in the order of time, and yielding only the first 
place in the matter of contemporaneous popu- 
larity to Harriet Beecher Stowe of all the 
women writers America has yet produced. 

Catherine Sedgwick is a distinctive Berk- 
shire product. A physical environment of 
mountains, if one lends himself to their in- 
fluence, their ruggedness and beauty, the lovely 
views and vistas they command, the breadth 
and sweep of vision from their summits, the 
lights and shades and hues of their slopes, — the 
green of summer, the fire-red tints of autumn, 
the hoary-heads of winter, the cloud-shadows 
always playing up and down their sides ; a 
physical environment of this sort, I say, must 



Catherine Maria Sedewick n 



t. 



produce, has ahvays produced, a distinct race 
of men. But Nature never reveals her secrets 
to those who only get out of her the streams 
which turn their mills, or the ore which fills 
their coffers, or the building-sites which put a 
fancy value on their farms. Our gods and 
shrines give to us only what we bring to them. 
Catherine Sedgwick responded to the entranc- 
ing picturesqueness of the region with rare 
loveliness of character and to the far-off reach 
of vision the mountains afforded with a breadth 
of intellectual vision which made her seventy 
years ahead of her time. We have only now 
just begun, so to speak, to come around to her 
views, and her first novel, A N'ezv England Tale, 
which in my judgment she never surpassed, 
was written seventy-eight years ago. What a 
beautiful tribute to that loveliness of character 
so conspicuous in Miss Catherine Sedgwick is 
this from her intimate friend, Mrs. Anna Jame- 
son, the distinguished author, who, about to 
leave America, writes (December 23, 1837) to 
her American craftswoman : 

" I never think of you without being glad and grateful 
to have known you, to have you to think of and talk of; 
so farewell, and God bless you; keep me a little wee 
corner in tliat good heart"; and later (February, 1838), 
when actually sailing away from these shores, writes Miss 



114 Lenox 

Sedgwick thus: " About four in the afternoon I was told 
we were just losing sight of land, so I crawled up and 
took one last look as the shores of America faded away 
under the western sun and in my heart I stretched out 
my arms to you for a last embrace and blessed that land 
because it \v as your land." 

But with this attractive and winning- character, 
which all who knew her felt the spell of, went 
great independence, liberty, breadth of thought, 
and freedom of utterance to the last degree. 
She was heretic, moralist, Christian all in one. 
As she herself says in her autobiography, and 
as her novels and tales everywhere attest, 
" Love of freedom and a habit of doing our 
own thinking has always characterized our 
clan." The dominant theology of her time, 
whose tyranny was the blight upon all spiritual 
life, was mercilessly exposed and rendered koi's 
de combat at the point of her pen. 

Yes, mountain scenery has a way of beauti- 
fying and broadening, inspiring, strengthening, 
and enriching character, so that what Miss 
Sedgwick became she owed in some degree to 
her environment, but birth and training were 
even far more creative influences. Born in 
1789 in Stockbridge, she was reared amid 
plenty, culture, and refinement, and the society 
of kinsfolk who, with her, had in their veins 



Catherine Maria Sedgwick 115 

the very best blood in Berkshire. She Hvecl 
to be seventy-eight years okl, dying in 1867, 
and roughly it may be said that the first half 
of her life was spent in Stockbridge and the 
latter half in Lenox, though both periods were 
much diversified by regular and prolonged 
stays in New York, at the homes of her 
brothers, themselves men of the highest legal 
and social standing in that city. Catherine 
Sedgwick came of distinguished parentage ; 
her father eminent throughout the common- 
wealth and country for his public services as a 
soldier of the Revolution, Congressman, United 
States Senator, and Judge of the Supreme 
Court, and enjoying the rare honor of Wash- 
ington's friendship and confidence ; her mother 
a Dwight, connected by birth with the Wil- 
liams, the Hopkins, and the Sargents, "river- 
gods," as they were called, of the valleys 
to the east. Catherine's girlhood was just 
one of those ordinary girlhoods which belong 
to any one of good family ; and especially to 
one whose father served in the highest public 
station, only at home for brief intervals. At 
eleven years of age, in the year 1800, she visits 
New York and attends dancine-school ; at 
thirteen we find her at Payne's school at 
Boston ; and during the years immediately 



ii6 Lenox 

following at school in Vermont and in Albany , 
and many visits to New York City were also 
recorded. To one who reflects on the means 
of getting about in those early days, and on 
the very brilliant intellectual company into 
which she was constantly thrown, it will not 
seem strange that Catherine was early broad- 
ened and matured beyond the maidens of her 
native village, or moulded by influences which 
ripened and deepened her mental and spiritual 
life. In 1807 her mother died, Catherine then 
beinof eighteen, but while a loss it was in one 
sense a relief, as the mother had been a chronic 
nervous invalid, whose rest came only in the 
mercifulness of death itself. In the six years 
following, her father marrying again after, as 
Miss Sedgwick says, the traditional "year and 
a day," the New York visits are many and fre- 
quent ; and we are to think of the New York 
of that period as an altogether different affair 
from the modern, enormous city. The future 
novelist was there gathering all unknown to 
herself the materials for some of her best 
stories — The Linwoods, Live and Let Live, 
Married or Single for example, which give 
us a very valuable picture of early New York. 
In 1813 we find Catherine in Boston with her 
father, whom she accompanies in his invalid 



Catherine Maria Sedgwick i r 7 

condition for treatment, and there at her aged 
parent's deathbed the services of a minister, 
WilHam Ellery Channing, are procured and 
there begins the deep and abiding friendship 
of Miss Sedo-wick and Dr. Channinor which 
lasted until the death of that illustrious teacher ; 
a friendship which doubtless went far to lead 
Miss Sedgwick, eight years after her father's 
death, out of the orthodox pale into the Uni- 
tarian Church and thus into the extremely 
effective service she rendered the cause of 
truth by subjecting the sterile orthodoxy of 
her day to the sting of her satire and the 
powerfulness of her rebukes, so justly deserved. 
I pass over the years of Miss Sedgwick's 
life immediately after her father's death, when 
she was twenty-four years of age, and was 
duly installed housekeeper by the return of 
her step-mother to her own people. In Mar- 
ried or Suigle Miss Sedgwick makes one of 
her characters say, "My father married for his 
second wife the tenth dilution of a woman "; 
and I have wondered if the novelist had not 
in mind her own step-mother, to whom she 
refers in her biography in the not very compli- 
mentary way,— as having " left us without in- 
spiring either respect or affection." From 
1813, then, Catherine was housekeeper in the 



ii8 Lenox 

old Stockbridg-e home for her brothers, during 
a period of ten years or so, with visits thrown 
in here and there, to Boston, New York, Phila- 
delphia, Baltimore, and Washington. The 
" War of 1 8 1 2 " came and went, and during one 
of the winters of that war some " French offi- 
cers in the British service were quartered at 
Stockbridge as prisoners," affording Catherine 
many agreeable diversions. The country was 
developing a national character ; the " era of 
good feeling" was approaching; the democ- 
racy of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe was 
steadily tending towards a more conservative 
ideal; the ereat Erie Canal was beinof built; 
already great inventions were startling the 
world; and in New York City where Catherine 
passed so much of her time De Witt Clinton 
was the stuff mayors were made of. There 
was, however, no fictitious literature, or what 
there was, was so under the ban that to read 
novels was to court the wrath of God and in- 
vite the disfavor of the Church. New Eng- 
land was being torn and rent by the coming 
of the Unitarian schism, and in 1819, only 
two years before Miss Sedgwick withdrew 
from orthodoxy, the Unitarian Church was 
formally launched. The very next year after 
her change of faith appeared her first novel 



Catherine Maria Sedo^wick 119 



(1822), and what she calls a "little tract" ran 
through several editions here and abroad; 
surely a phenomenal thing. There had been 
no literary antecedents; Miss Sedgwick was a 
woman of thirty-three years when she became 
an author, and had never written before. Scott 
had begun eight years before his Waverley 
novels; Irving was just beginning to be known; 
Cooper had answered two years earlier the 
British taunt, " Who ever reads an American 
book?" by commencing his Leather-stocking 
Series ; Hawthorne was but eighteen and Bul- 
wer but seventeen ; Thackeray was eleven, and 
Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe but ten; 
and Marian Evans was toddline, a eirl of two. 
And here was a woman of thirty-three, who 
had never shown literary workmanship, at a 
time when the novel was tabooed, achievino- in- 
stant and world-wide fame ! And achieving it, 
too, by a brilliant but fearless arraignment of 
the orthodox faith of New England. She 
literally "awoke to find herself famous"; and 
not only famous, but the target of many un- 
kind reproaches. Her first book, A New Eng- 
land Tale, had accomplished its purpose ; and 
her polished quiver had winged its way straight 
to the vulnerable part of New England the- 
ology. Dogma was shown up, with no 



1 20 Lenox 

unsparing hand, associated with sterile and un- 
lovely spiritual life; the scene of her first story 
is laid in her native town of Stockbridge. Usu- 
ally literary promise precedes great workman- 
ship in letters ; there are hints that a star is on 
the eve of being discovered ; but in this case 
it bursts full-orbed upon the world without a 
warning. 

Everybody was surprised, including the au- 
thor. She writes soon after the appearance 
of her book: 

" I protest against being supposed to make an}' pre- 
tension as an author : my production is a very small af- 
fair anyway. ... I hardly know any treasure 1 
would not exchange to be where I was before my crow- 
tracks passed into the hands of printer's devils. I be- 
gan that little storv as a tract and because I wanted 
some pursuit, and felt spiritless and sad, and thought I 
might perhaps lend a helping hand to some of the 
humbler virtues." 

Thence on the life-stor)- of Catherine Maria 
Sedgwick is simply the story of her books 
and in her books, one following another in 
rapid succession for thirty-six years, inter- 
rupted only in 1839 ^Y ^ ^^^9 ^^ England and 
Europe, where she already had made hosts 
of friends by her romances. Two years 
after A iVc-zu England Tale followed Red- 



Catherine Maria Sedewick 121 



C5 



wood (1824), and immediately ran through 
several editions, appearing abroad in English 
French, German, Italian, and Spanish re- 
prints: a book of which G. P. R. James says: 
" No home ought to be without a copy for 
study and amusement," Her brother writes 
her from New York: " The book-sellers are all 
teasinor nie to know when another work will 
come from the author of Redwood. They 
say it will go as well or better than one from 
Cooper or Irving," The Travellers followed 
in the next year (1825), and two years later 
( 1827), her most celebrated work, Hope Leslie, 
a tale of the early colonists, of which Donald 
G. Mitchell says in his recent Ameriea^i 
Lands a7id Letters : 

" I can recall even now with vividness the 
great relish with which — more than sixty years 
ago — a company of school-boys in the middle 
of New England devoured its pages and 
lavished their noisy sympathies upon the 
perils of ' Everell ' or the daring of the gener- 
ous ' Macranisca.'" 

With the publication of Clarence (1830), 
The Linwoods (1835), ^^^ Tales and Sketches 
(1835), Miss Sedgwick's literary fame was 
secure; the only difficulty was to keep up 
with the demand. It was not far from this 



122 Lenox 

time that Catherine removed to Lenox for 
her summer home, making her abode with her 
brother Charles, who was for nearl)-^ forty 
years the Clerk of the Courts in that moun- 
tain town, then the county scat of Berkshire, 
a dignity it maintained for eighty-one years. 
Now a fashionable resort, and bereft of its 
character as a seat of learning, culture, and 
great social distinction, save as it shines by 
the reflected lioht of the oreat wealth and 
refinement of those who have pre-empted 
its heights for magnificent and costly villas, 
Lenox was then in the zenith of its glory 
as the shire-town. It is with this town, then, 
that Miss Sedgwick's later life is to be identi- 
fied ; and it is no wonder that subsequently 
with Hawthorne, Fanny Kemble, John O, 
Sargent, Henry Ward Beecher, and Miss 
Sedo'wick livinof in the immediate neio'hbor- 
hood, and such persons as Lowell, Holmes, 
Fields, Sumner, and Channing to be seen in 
their fellowship, Lenox should have been 
fairly entitled to its high literary renown. 

We purposely turned from the story of 
Miss Sedgwick's books to the town where she 
cast in the lot of her later years, though 
with regular winter sojourns in New York 
City, in order that in returning to the record 



Catherine Maria Sedgwick 



Il'X 



of her works we may notice the distinct change 
in her Hterary purpose and achievement. 
Fourteen years of elaborate story-writing are 
followed by fourteen years of tales for chil- 
dren : Home (1836) ; The Poor Rich Man and 
the Rich Poor Man (1836) ; Live and Let 
Live (1837) ; Love-token for Children (1838) ; 
Means and Ends (1838) ; Stories for Young 
Persons (1840) ; Wilton Harvey ; Morals and 
Manners ( 1 846) ; Facts and Fancies for School 
Days ; Monnt Righi Boy (1848) ; City Clerk 
and his Porter (1850) ; and The Lrish Girl 
(1850). Many of these passed through several 
editions ; and the first five named I would 
earnestly commend to all. All these short 
stories for juvenile readers have the ideal 
home as the refrain and underlying thought 
of their simple tales. Live and Let L^ive ought 
to be bound up with the Bible and called the 
" Epistle to the Americans," by Saint Cath- 
erine , and then every housewife should read it 
at least once a year. It tells the story of the 
daughter of a gentlewoman going out to 
service, and the whole domestic economy of 
homes is shown up truthfully. It abounds in 
practical common-sense. It might be criti- 
cised as too Utopian for this work-a-day world, 
but that 's what we are always saying about 



124 Lenox 

ideals that seem too high. Home Is another 
one of these short stories whose purpose is 
sufficiently told in its title, but the story 
itself is without action, — a fault that could 
in a general way be urged against all Miss 
Sedgwick's larger works. Plot and counter- 
plot, uncertainty as to the way the story will 
end, and the ability to manage dramatic situa- 
tions without, so to speak, lugging them in 
— all these Miss Sedgwick's books are sadly 
deficient in and that is one reason why she is 
no longer read. But the question will arise, 
What do we read novels for ? For their 
story merely ? Or for their philosophy of 
life, their description of manners and customs, 
their literary workmanship, and a host of 
other things more important ? Miss Sedg- 
wick was essentially the moralist, more than 
the story-teller ; and in these short stories 
written by the mature woman in the prime of 
her vioror she reaches her hiorh-water mark. 
They reached multitudes, passed through 
several editions, were universally commended, 
and to this day and for this day might be 
read with unspeakable profit. The discipline 
of home, the courtesy and sacrifice and re- 
finement that should obtain in the family, the 
development of the child by emphasizing self- 



Catherine Maria Sedg-wick 125 



& 



control rather than mere parental control, 
the treatment of domestic help, the care of 
the children's readinor the earnest and con- 
stant commendation of the spiritual life, the 
hatred of shams, the unwisdom of the ac- 
cumulation of large fortunes for children, the 
spirit of democracy, the cultivation of the 
amenities of life, conversation at table, habits 
of politeness and reverence, the true man- 
hood and womanhood — all these make a mes- 
sage for to-day ; I have felt my own heart 
moved and stirred by listening to the sublime 
ethical philosophy of these short stories ; and 
I feel ready to endorse what Harriet Martineau 
said of them . " Wonderfully beautiful." 

When Miss Sedgwick had fulfilled her pur- 
pose of speaking to the young people of the 
world in these short ethical tractates, she laid 
aside her pen for awhile. She was then sixty- 
one years old ; Mitchell calls her " the fine old 
lady of the Berkshire highlands." With a 
rare record of achievement, with the rarest 
friendships at home and abroad, it might have 
seemed natural to lay down the pen forever, 
particularly as Dickens, Thackeray, Lytton, 
Reade were splendid luminaries, and new star- 
geniuses, Marian Evans and Mrs. Stowe were 
already rising, while Catherine Sedgwick's star 



126 Lenox 

was westering. But the old spell was upon 
her ; one more message must be said, and at 
sixty-eight she brings out her last great work, 
Married or Single (1857). I have omitted 
from the record of her books two biographies 
which she wrote, one on Miss Lucretia David- 
son, a Poet, and one on Joseph Curtis, a Model 
Man ; also a book of travels recounting her 
stay In England and Europe, Letters from 
Abroad to Kitidred at Home (1841). Any 
such toiler as this woman could rightly have 
pleaded at sixty-eight — only two years from 
the three-score-and-ten mark — exemption from 
further service, but it is a great tribute, I 
think, to her force as a writer that this last 
novel, Married or Single, was one of her very 
best. Doctor A. P. Peabody pronounced it 
"" the best of the series which she wrote." It 
has more action than her other stories ; more 
literary workmanship ; Is full of bits of wisdom 
on the married state ; and was written to com- 
bat the idea that an unmarried woman must 
necessarily view her life as useless. Miss 
Sedgwick was a believer In marriage ; but she 
did not believe that a single life need make 
any one unhappy or useless as a member of 
society. The scenes of the story are laid in 
New York City for the most part, and portray 



Catherine Maria Sedorwick 127 



i:? 



social customs. The preparation of the book 
was slow and laborious at her age, and accom- 
panied by an extremely lonely feeling that her 
old readers had passed away ; yet she perse- 
vered and accomplished the work she had in 
hand. The pen was then put away, and her 
mission done. Ten years followed, during 
which her life was a sweet benediction in and 
out of the family circle, a period of pleasant 
memories and tender ministries, of rich friend- 
ships and correspondence ; the slow sinking of 
her sun beneath the western horizon, a mild 
light of peace and restfulness suffusing all, and 
the hush of evening's silent tread stealing upon 
life's long and busy day. Catherine Sedgwick 
died in 1867, at the age of seventy-eight, and 
is buried in the Stockbridge Cemetery sur- 
rounded by the dust of many generations of 
her kinsfolk. 

If there were space it would be a tribute 
worth the while to record the intimate friend- 
ships of this woman with the great of her own 
land, and of the various countries of Europe. 
A few only must suffice. Friendships they 
were, real, intense, and abiding. Sismondi, 
Miss Frederika Bremer, Mrs. Jameson, William 
Cullen Bryant, and Dr. Channing, with Fanny 
Kemble, who was lured to the Berkshires by 



128 Lenox 

Miss Sedgwick's influence, and afterwards spent 
many years in Lenox as her constant and in- 
timate friend, have left beautiful tributes to 
her. 

" It is long since I have written you dearest 
Catherine," writes Mrs. Jameson; "long since 
I have heard from you. One might as well 
have friends in heaven as across the Atlantic" 
— that was sixty years ago when mail delivery 
across the ocean was not as now a matter of 
five or six days — "but your kind affectionate 
face is before me and I feel that I cannot af- 
ford to be forgotten by you, my good and 
dear friend." 

Miss Kemble writes, "Catherine Sedgwick 
is my best friend in this country," and those 
who know the story of the intellectual com- 
pany in the Lenox Sedgwick home, graced so 
often by Miss Kemble's appearance, and hon- 
ored by her Shakspearian readings, at which 
many literary people were present, can well 
believe that theirs was no common friendship. 

Dr. Channing spent his last summer on earth 
in Lenox, and thus writes June 12, 1842 : 

"This summer I have determined to try inland air, 
and am in the mountainous district of Massachusetts. 
. . . One of ray great pleasures is that my friend 
Miss Sedgwick lives a door or two from me. I wish 







Catherine Maria Sedgwick. 
[From the painting by Ingham.] 



Catherine Maria Sedgwick 129 

you could see her in her family almost worshipped not 
for her genius, but for her loveliness of character and 
the shedding of blessed influences." 

William Cullen Bryant, who was her very 
warm and true friend throughout a half-century 
and whose genius was in a way discovered by 
the Sedgwicks, who urged him to leave Great 
Barrington, where he was a young lawyer 
and the town clerk, and come to New York, 
has left a picture of her as she was when 
Ingham painted his fine portrait of her (1820) : 
" Well-formed, slightly inclining to plump- 
ness, with regular features, eyes beaming with 
benevolence, a pleasing smile, a soft voice, 
and gentle and captivating manners." Bry- 
ant's tribute to her character at her death is 
exquisite, but is too long to be reproduced here. 

And these were only a few of her friends. 
She knew Longfellow, and Dana, and Hal- 
leck, and Cooper, and Willis, and Haw- 
thorne, and Irving, and Fields, and Sumner, 
and Curtis, and Mrs. Stowe, and Mrs. 
Howe, and Bayard Taylor, and on the other 
side she made the acquaintance of Hallam and 
Macaulay and Carlyle. And yet she shines 
not by their reflected light ; rather do they 
themselves borrow something from her, though 
they give more. 



130 Lenox 

Of the memories of Miss Sedo^wick in 
Lenox and Stockbridge, of the many refer- 
ences to her loved Berkshire in her works, and 
of the services she rendered the cause of Hb- 
eral theology much could be written, but I 
pass on to speak in closing of her place in 
literature. 

It is evident when Cooper's and Irving's 
works are still read, and Miss Sedgwick, their 
contemporary, is only dimly remembered, if at 
all, that her works are not of the first order in 
a literary point of view. They lack action, 
and they lack style, or rather because the 
" style is the man," they lack style because the 
woman herself was perfectly modest and trans- 
parent. Still there are quotable bits, and the 
characters are many of them vividly drawn ; 
and the philosophy of the whole is sunny, pro- 
found, truthful, liberal, and deeply religious. 
Miss Mitford is, as she says in writing to a 
friend, "surprised at the freedom from cant in 
Miss Sedgwick's works, considering the do-me- 
good nature of her books." They are moral 
tales pre-eminently, with the ever-accompany- 
ing thread of love, — a string on which she ties 
her pearls of wisdom and ethical philosophy ; 
but they are no ordinary pearls,— the super- 
ficial advice, the homely counsel, the preaching 



Catherine Maria Sedg^wick 131 



& 



of pious exhortations, — rather are they the 
choicest possible truths, the union of the hb- 
eral and the deeply spiritual spirit, the deep- 
est and sanest counsels, living inspirations and 
impulses of power, seed-truths which must 
fructify once planted in the soil of the heart. 
Miss Sedofwick's books are studies in ethics. 
Take Bryant's summing up of her character : 
" an unerring sense of rectitude, a love of truth, 
a ready sympathy, an active and cheerful bene- 
ficence, winning and gracious manners^' and 
add anything if you can. He knew her ; and 
tell me if a character such as that would not 
be sane and deep in its ethical teaching. 
Her books are not "goody-goody," yet she 
never wrote one without a purpose. She por- 
trayed sin but always to make one loathe it ; 
never, as so many of our present-day novelists 
do, to make it attractive. To give to prurient 
scenes realism in the name of art, to array 
moral rot in a shining verbal vesture and so 
degrade literary workmanship, as do some 
whose books make our libraries a doubtful 
blessing, was far, very far from her. On the 
contrary, to preach and rant and exhort and 
nag, she was equally far from. She taught 
by examples not maxims. Daniel Prime in 
Tales and Sketches, a typical avaricious fiend. 



132 Lenox 

whose palm so itches for gold that he slays his 
own daug-hter, in whose favor the will of her 
grandfather was drawn, and by the murder of 
whom, being- a minor, the father hoped to get her 
fortune, is a sermon in himself without a moral 
being drawn. Dame Wilson in A New Eng- 
land Tale, a cruel, grasping, selfish, and un- 
lovely creature of most faultless orthodoxy, 
tells in clarion tones though altogether by 
inference the perfectly sterile living which may 
go with mere intellectual acceptance of a 
creed. Miss Sedgwick was versed in the the- 
ology of the day, and the vigorous raps she 
gives it are severe, and ingenious, and bitter. 
It is no wonder, as her brother wrote her, " the 
Calvinists are miffed " — but that was her mis- 
sion to get people to live right. It was life, 
not belief, she was after ; and she valorously, 
fearlessly went at it. She was radical, but 
constructive ; liberal but spiritual ; indepen- 
dent, but modest and sweet ; religious, but no 
canting fanatic with a hobby ; literary, but not 
a juggler with words, nor would she degrade 
her art by a flesh-tinted realism ; ethical, but 
not hortatory ; and truthful, but not dogmatic. 
As Horace Mann once said of Miss Sed2:wick : 
"She is, indeed, a noble woman. Humanity 
exhales from her whole being. Her benevo- 



Catherine Maria Sedgwick 133 

lence, conscientiousness, and reverence express 
themselves in all her novels." It is impossible 
to fix her exact place in the literature of 
America. She was a pioneer in American 
letters. She made American books respected 
abroad. She was perfectly fearless, as is shown 
by using the novel to convey truth, and by her 
sharp arraignment of New England theology. 
She tauo-ht hio-h and sane ethics. She was a 
keen observer and the manners and life of her 
age are there photographed on her page. She 
loved Berkshire and many are the allusions to 
it in her works. She had intimate friends 
among the great everywhere. She possessed 
a beautiful character. She wrought diligently 
and well, producing many books. She is sec- 
ond only to Mrs. Stowe among American 
women of letters. 

I will close with just one paragraph from 
A New England Tale, her first and to me her 
best book. It is a passage which more than 
any other shows what she was after ; her mis- 
sion to get people to see what was the real 
heart of relicrion, a life of obedience, of service, 
and sacrifice, and sympathy, and courtesy, and 
not psalm-singing, church-going, prayers, and 
Bible-reading ; love, righteousness, truth, not 
mere piety and creed. 



134 Lenox 

Dame Wilson had been all her long- life a 
strict orthodox believer, but had never done 
any one a kindness ; was the very innermost 
soul of hard-hearted, close-fisted, harsh-tongued 
repulsiveness, though outwardly respectable. 
Her ward and niece, Jane Elton, was her pet 
victim ; and Mr. Lloyd who loved Jane was a 
Quaker, and deeply in sympathy with Jane's 
wrongs from this " religious " woman, who had 
family prayers, went to church, and believed 
all the Calvinistic dogmas, but was selfish and 
cruel and unfeeling, with harsh judgments, a 
tight purse, and a heart of stone. And now 
she was dead, and the funeral had taken place, 
and Jane and Mr, Lloyd are talking over her 
life. 

"'Then you believe,' replied Jane, 'that my aunt de- 
ceived herself by her clamorous profession ? ' 

" ' Undoubtedly,' said Mr. Lloyd. 'Ought we wonder 
that she deceived herself since we have heard in her 
funeral sermon her experiences detailed as the triumphs 
of a saint ; her attendance upon ordinances com- 
mended as if they were the end and not the means of 
the religious life ; since we (who cannot remember a 
single gracious act of humility in her whole life) have 
been told as a proof of her gracious state that the last 
rational words she pronounced were that she was of sin- 
ners the chief.' . . . ''Professions and declara/ions 
have crept in among the Protestants to take the place of the 



Catherine Maria Sedgwick 



135 



mortifications and penances of the ancient church; so prone 
are men to find some easier way to heaven than the toilsome 
path of obedience.' " 

Is there not need of Miss Sedgwick's mes- 
sage to-day ? 




IV 



WITH HAWTHORNE IN LENOX 



THE advent of General Zachary Taylor to 
the Presidency, in 1849, caused one 
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Democrat, to be re- 
moved from his office in the Salem custom- 
house. The Whigs had professed, with the 
usual hollowness of party platforms, to be 
opposed to the doctrine " To the victors belong 
the spoils," but their wolfish hunger by long 
abstention could hardly conceal itself 'neath 
the fleecy clothing of their political shibbo- 
leths. Hawthorne received word, within three 
months after the coming into power of the 
new regime, that he was turned out of office, 
and the axes of Taylor's headsmen chopped 
merrily, outrivalling the busy work of Jack- 
son's spoliators, twenty years before. 

The Salem custom-house officer took his 
dismissal philosophically, and the good wife 

136 



With Hawthorne in Lenox 137 

at home said to him bravely : " Now you will 
have time to write your book." The next 
spring that book appeared, — The Scarlet 
Letter, written within the six months which 
followed his dismissal, with nothing to live 
upon but the savings which his wife had 
managed to lay up out of his meagre salary. 
It was the merest chance that prevented that 
book from being written in Lenox, for just 
prior to his removal from office, the Berkshire 
capital is talked about as a place to spend the 
summer, and after the dismissal, the Haw- 
thornes regret they had not " taken the Lenox 
cottage." Without office, it was all the more 
the purpose of Hawthorne to get away into 
the Berkshires, where he could write his 
book. August 8th, he writes his brother-in-law, 
Horace Mann: 

" My surveyorship is lost and I liave no expecta- 
tion, nor any desire, of regaining it. ... I mean, 
as soon as possible; — that is to say, as soon as I 
can find a cheap, pleasant and healthy residence, — 
to remove into the country and bid farewell forever 
to this abominable city " ; 

and as early as September 2d, Mrs. Haw- 
thorne writes her mother, " the prospect of 
mountainous air already vivifies the blood." 
What this means is explained in a letter she 



138 Lenox 

herself receives September 10, 1849, from a 
friend who says : " I am glad you are going to 
Lenox because it is such a beautiful place and 
you have so many friends there." It was 
here, then, where Hawthorne was to have 
written the famous romance which caused his 
genius to be universally recognized. The 
reason why he deferred his coming to Berk- 
shire for six months, and so caused his first 
o-reat novel to see the licjht in Salem instead, 
is not oriven. His own mother's illness and 
death that summer broke up his plans for an 
early getting away, and the fall of the year 
seems inopportune to go into the country; 
particularly into the Berkshires. 

With the early spring of the following year, 
1850, the book is published; and in May 
Hawthorne, worn out with the experiences 
of the twelvemonth, — discharge from office, 
and the consequent worry as to the support 
of his family on the haphazard means at his 
command, the death of his mother, and the 
languor of body and mind due to the labor 
of creating his first romance, — repairs to 
Lenox, the pure air of whose hills he inhales 
at the same time as there wafts toward him 
the fragrant incense of praise from all parts 
of the world. What a contrast this affords ! 



With Hawthorne in Lenox 139 

from the " abominable city " with its hated 
wharves and dingy warehouses, to the heights 
of Lenox with the most entrancing of land- 
scapes to look out upon ! from being as he 
styled himself " the obscurest man in American 
letters," although he had published four years 
before The Mosses from an old Manse (1846) 
and nine years before that Tivice-Told Tales 
(1837), to the pinnacle of fame, and com- 
parisons between himself and Shakespeare ! 
from the disappointment and anxiety due to 
removal from office, to the elation and security 
of an assured literary career ! from a life of 
daily drudgery with weights and measures, to 
the vocation of his life — to write ; — a prisoner 
dragging his chain and ball transformed into 
a freeman, whose name in tones of worship- 
ful admiration and respect was upon every 
tongue ! Let us bless the axe of the Whig 
headsman after all, and love it for the gory 
stains it bears of a certain custom-house 
ofificer's scalp ! The kick became a boost. 
In the light of what happened, therefore, 
it is a pleasure to read Mrs. Hawthorne's 
words, on the very day that Hawthorne was 
deposed from office (June 8, 1849) • 

" Mr. Hawthorne never liked the office at all and is 
rather relieved than otherwise that it is taken out of 



140 Lenox 

his hands, and has an inward confidence that some- 
thing better and more suitable for him will turn up. 
As for me, you know I am composed of Faith and 
Hope, and while I have my husband and children I 
feel as if Montezuma's diamonds and emeralds were 
spiritually in my possession." 

Hawthorne, then, came to Lenox in the 
first flush of the dawn of his Hterary reputa- 
tion, May, 1850, ahnost forty-six years of age. 
He was twenty-five years out of Bowdoin, had 
written a good deal of the type of the maga- 
zine article, and published in addition to his 
great romance two books of short stories, 
and at thirty-eight years, rather late in life, 
had married Miss Sophie Peabody, an invalid 
whom he loved enough to ask only the privi- 
leee of ministeringf to, as Brownino- to Eliza- 
beth Barrett, but to whom as not to Mrs. 
Browning came health in the marriage re- 
lation. It was with wife and two children 
that Hawthorne came to the Berkshires, and 
it was here in the little house they occupied 
that a third child, Rose, came to bless and 
grace the home circle. Lenox was at that time 
the shire-town and the centre as well of great 
literary prestige. Miss Catherine Sedgwick 
was nearing the end of her literary labors and 
her creative energy was almost a spent force, 



With Hawthorne in Lenox 141 

and Mrs. Fanny Kemble-Butler was still in 
her heyday of vigor ; both women residents of 
Lenox, and attracting here wits and statesmen, 
authors and divines to their brilliant society 
and the hilltop breezes and landscapes. In 
Stockbridge were staying temporarily such 
men as Lowell, Whipple, and G. P R. James, 
while in Pittsfield lived Dr. Holmes and 
Herman Melville. At or about this time 
the memories of the visits of Channing, Miss 
Martineau, Mrs. Jameson, Curtis, Longfellow, 
Sumner, and Miss Frederika Bremer were 
fresh in the minds of all. Indeed, Berkshire 
has not inaptly been called the " lake-country " 
of America because its cluster of literary 
brilliants was set in the midst of great pic- 
turesque beauty. 

But we must remember that Hawthorne 
in cominof to Berkshire left behind him com- 
panionships with men of letters who paled 
to a degree the brilliancy of his newer fellow- 
craftsmen. His Concord days were not to 
be reproduced : days when he had the rarest 
intimacy with the choice spirits and minds 
of the greatest in American letters, — tramping 
with Emerson, dining again and again with 
Longfellow, his classmate, at Parker's or the 
Tremont, boating with Ellery Channing up 



142 Lenox 

and down the river that flowed through the 
old Concord battle-field, entertaining Thoreau 
at the Old Manse, strolling with Lowell in 
familiar chat and giving him advice and en- 
couragement as his elder by fifteen years, 
and keyed up to the highest intellectual ten- 
sion by the society of the brilliant Margaret 
Fuller Ossoli ; for these were the creators and 
prophets who discovered Hawthorne's genius 
long, long before the publication of his first 
romance. Hawthorne came to Lenox obscure 
in a way, only just beginning to be known, 
it is true , but it seems to me a somewhat 
colossal joke to claim that Herman Melville, 
by his notice of The Scarlet Letter in the col- 
umns of a literary journal, "discovered " him ! 
It was natural that Hawthorne, who wrote 
of his days with Emerson at Concord, " It 
was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without 
inhaling more or less the mountain atmosphere 
of his lofty thought," should write to Long- 
fellow after a year at Lenox: " Here I feel 
remote and quite beyond companionship." 
And not only had the great of America's best 
minds recognized Hawthorne's genius and 
taken him into their innermost fellowship 
long- before The Scarlet Letter, and longf 
before any such person as Melville was known, 



With Hawthorne in Lenox 143 

but across the water his power was fek. 
" Dickens," says Forster, " put into my hands 
Mosses from an Old Manse, with injunctions 
to read it" ; and Miss Marian Evans confesses 
about this time : " Hawthorne is a grand fa- 
vorite of mine," 

The Hght of an author's success reveals 
usually his earlier works, which before that 
had failed to make themselves known. The 
Mosses are as beautiful as anything Hawthorne 
ever wrote, and the " Old Manse " seems to 
have walked out of a picture-frame so real is its 
quiet, classic beauty, with the historic river 
and battle-field hard by. Yet not until Hester 
and Dimmesdale became living realities on the 
canvas of human thought did the world see 
the creative energy of a new artist and turn to 
look at the character of his earlier productions. 

It is here, then, in Lenox that we find Haw- 
thorne in the spring of 1850, resting after the 
mighty creation which had placed forever, in 
the galaxy of letters, a new star. It was a 
tiny house, that " little red house " he occu- 
pied, set upon the hillside and overlooking a 
bit of landscape whose charm, whose lights 
and shadows, and whose tints gave to the lake 
and mountains beyond a meaning and an in- 
spiration which were constant sources of bless- 



144 Lenox 

ing, restfulness, and Invigoratlon. Indeed, the 
fascination of the scenery was so alluring that 
he said, " I cannot write in the presence of that 
view." On all these points about us the eye 
of Hawthorne rested in mute and lavish ad- 
miration, though it was a view of which he 
tired to some extent, as he wearied of the 
climate so trying in mountainous altitudes. 
Dr. Holmes rides down from Pittsfield to visit 
the Hawthornes, the second year of their stay, 
and Hawthorne insists upon holding Dr. 
Holmes's horse while its rider dismounts to 
step inside to get the view through the bou- 
doir-window On comincr out the crenial doc- 
tor said, "Is there another man in all America 
who ever had so great an honor as to have 
the author of The Scarlet Letter' hold his 
horse ?" Let us get this view in Hawthorne's 
own lano-uaofe: 

" The house stands on a gently sloping eminence, a 
short distance away in the lap of the valley a beautiful 
lake, reflecting a perfect image of its own wooded banks, 
and of the summits of the more distant hills, as it 
gleamed in glassy tranquillity without the trace of a 
winged breeze on any part of its bosom. There is a 
glen between this house and the lake, through which 
winds a little brook with pools and tiny waterfalls over 
the great roots of trees. The glen is deep and narrow 
and filled with trees, so that it is all a dense shadow of 



With Hawthorne in Lenox 145 

obscurity. Beyond the lake is Monument Mountain 
looking like a headless sphinx wrapped in a Persian 
shawl, when clad in the rich and diversified autumnal 
foliage of its woods; and beyond Monument the dome 
of Taconic whose round head is more distinct than ever 
in winter when its snow-patches are visible but which 
generally is a dark blue unvaried mountain-top. There 
are many nearer hills which border the valley and all 
this intervening hill-country is rugged. The sunsets of 
winter are incomparably splendid, and when the ground 
is covered with snow no brilliancy of tint expressible by 
words can come within an infinite distance of the effect. 
Our southern view at that time, with the clouds and at- 
mospherical hues, can neither be described, nor imagined, 
and the various distances of tlic hills which lie between 
us and the remote dome of Taconic are brought out 
with accuracy. And yet the face of nature can never 
look more beautiful than in May when Monument and 
its brethren are green; and the lightness of the tint 
takes away something from their massiveness and pon- 
derosity, and they respond with livelier effect to the 
shine and shade of the sky. Each tree then stands out 
in its own individuality of hue." 

It must be added, in the interest of histori- 
cal veracity, that there is a passage in the In- 
troduction to Tangiezvood Tales, written within 
two years after the Hawthornes left Lenox, 
showing that the novelist grew rather a- weary 
with the sameness of the entrancing landscape 
just described. Hawthorne is back now (1853) 
in Concord, and writes: 



146 Lenox 

" It was idle to imagine that an airy guest from Monu- 
ment Mountain, Bald-Summit, and old Greylock, shaggy 
with primeval forests, could see anything to admire in 
my broad meadows and gentle eminences. Yet to me 
there is a peculiar quiet charm about them. They are 
better than mountains, because they do not stamp and 
stereotyi)e themselves into the brain, and thus grow 
wearisome with the same strong impression, repeated 
day after day. A few summer weeks among mountains, 
a lifetime among green meadows and placid slopes, with 
outlines forever new because continually fading out of 
the memory, — such would be my sober choice." 

Beautiful as was the exterior view greeting 
the occupants of " Tanglewood," Mrs. Haw- 
thorne describes the interior in a way whicli 
shows that the inner beauty of the " httle red 
house " was in keeping with the outer charm, 
with engravings, rugs, ottomans, quaint old 
furniture, and a rare delicacy of taste in all 
the simple appointments. Soon the household 
economy was in smooth running order, after 
the break-up at Salem, and the family settle 
down to the enjoyment of their new surround- 
ings before other literary work is begun. Four 
months pass this way, and in the end of August 
Hawthorne begins to write his next great ro- 
mance, The House of the Seven Gables, that grim 
treatise on the Second Commandment, or the 
children's sufferino- for the father's sins. The 




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With Hawthorne in Lenox 147 

life in " Tanglewood " is now a methodical af- 
fair : the literary creator busy mornings with 
his Maules and Pyncheons, with Hepzibah and 
Clifford, their mimic experiences the shadows 
of great realities ; the daily walk to the post- 
ofhce in Lenox, the walk with the children to 
a farmhouse half a mile distant for milk along 
a road the gentle father styled to their ears 
"the milky way," the play-hour with Una and 
Julian, who averred there never was "such a 
playmate " as their father, and the evening 
readings with and to the good wife who was 
raptly devoted to the brilliant man who loved 
her with a perfect love, to which she responded 
as the imaged sky in the lake's glassy surface 
to the blue vault above, each perfectly match- 
ing the other. 

Hawthorne in the Mosses had said during 
the first years of their married life in the 
beautiful Concord days, " Here I recline upon 
the unwithered grass and whisper to myself 
'O perfect day! O beautiful world! O benefi- 
cent God!'" and from Lenox he writes Loner- 

o 

fellow: " I am as happy as mortal can be." It 
was an idyllic life : scenery that entranced, a 
growing fame filling the world, a home where 
love reigned ; work which called out his soul's 
best strength, and an abandon to sport in the 



148 Lenox 

play-hour with the children, flying kites, or 
" coasting," or walking on the " marble pave- 
ment " of the frozen lake in the season, making 
a palace of snow with ice-windows, nutting with 
them and climbing into the tip-top of the 
trees, lying on the lake-shore while the chil- 
dren covered him with leaves, — a perfect com- 
panion whose presence was enjoyed by the 
children as that of no other, and who told 
them in simple phrase classic stories as they 
walked by his side, and listened, rapt auditors. 
Both agreed that he had the sweetest smile, 
that " tall, broad-shouldered, handsome man 
with the low voice and shy, gentle ways," as 
Whipple has described him, " with a dash of 
gray in his hair, and a grave but kindly face, 
and with the most wonderful eyes in the world, 
searching as lightning and unfathomable as 
night: the most gentle, genial, and humane of 
men." He had no ear for music and declared 
that he could not distinguish between Hail 
Columbia and Yankee Doodle, but Lowell pro- 
nounced him " the greatest poet, though he 
wrote in prose, that America has given to the 
world." Abnormally shy and retiring before 
strangers, so modest that it is said he once 
leaped a wall in Lenox to avoid some pedes- 
trians coming up the road, his presence was the 



With Hawthorne in Lenox 149 

life of the home ; and yet the majority of peo- 
ple who knew Hawthorne in Lenox fifty years 
ago set down his quiet modesty for morose- 
ness, a quality which I believe has been at- 
tributed to him more from the sad vein that 
runs through all his books than from the fact 
that he was melancholy, or morbid. Standing 
on Bald Head he calls himself to his children 
in The Wonder Book the " silent man." Yet 
"quiet, sensitive, and shy" as he was, the 
whole region is eloquent with his presence, 
and as at Cooperstown one inbreathes the 
memory of the first writer of American fiction, 
so at Lenox the presence of Hawthorne is 
stamped on lake and dell, on peak and crag, 
on highway and meadow, forming part of the 
charm of the landscape itself as we reflect that 
he viewed it and loved it. 

The Lenox chapter in Hawthorne's life was, 
however, one of busy toil. The workman was 
"shaping at the forge of thought " his mighty 
conceptions. Let it be remembered that when 
he came to the Berkshires he had just finished 
his first romance. Four months of rest ensued, 
and then in the end of August he begins The 
House of the Seven Gables, which was finished 
January 26th, 185 i. The first proofs came in 
the middle of February, and the book was out 



150 Lenox 

in March in response to large advance orders. 
In the estimate of its author it was a better 
book, in some respects, than his earher and 
more celebrated novel ; " more characteristic 
of me," he says, " and more natural for me 
to write"; and Lowell writes him: "It is a 
great triumph, and will build you a monu- 
ment." The style is as pellucid as the waters 
of the lake he looked out upon when he wrote 
it, for Hawthorne was a consummate master 
of clear diction and literary art. The story is 
in the line of that "anatomy of melancholy" 
in which Hawthorne revelled, but it has what 
Mrs. Hawthorne styled " flowers of Paradise 
scattered all over its dark places." 

A few months only elapsed between The 
House of the Seven Gables and his next book, A 
Woyider Book for Boys and Girls, begim in 
June and finished in a month and a half. 
This is practically a retelling of the classic 
stories of mythology for children ; and the 
Eustace Bright who relates them, a college 
boy home on a vacation, to children who go 
by the names of Primrose, Sweet Fern. Blue- 
eye, Clover, Cowslip, and so on, is none other 
than Hawthorne himself, relating talks with 
his own children, Una and Julian, as he had 
played, and coasted, and tramped, and climbed 



With Hawthorne in Lenox 151 

with them in the neighborhood of " Tangle- 
wood." This is the Berkshire book, describing 
" Tanglewood," Shadow Brook, and Bald 
Head, where the stories are told. It was read 
in manuscript to his children, and their rapt 
delight was as satisfactory to its author as his 
wife's painful interest in the reading from manu- 
script of The House of the Seven Gables had 
been, for she sometimes begged him to stop as 
she could hear no more. The Wonder Book 
was finished July 15th, and was published soon 
after. Almost as soon as the summer was 
over, Hawthorne was at work over a new collec- 
tion of " Twice-Told Tales" entitled The Snoiu 
Image and Other Tales, which had been written, 
many of them, in earlier days, but were now 
brought together in one volume, whose " pref- 
ace" bears date " Lenox, Nov. i, 1851." 

This was the last literary work Hawthorne 
did in Lenox, which he left November 21st, 
but we must not forget the Diary which he 
so faithfully kept all his life — "seventeen 
quartos," Lowell says, almost as voluminous 
as John Quincy Adams's daily chronicles. 
From this Diary came the posthumous 
American Notes, where the daily happenings 
at " Tanglewood " are recorded. And we must 
also not forget that The Blithedale Romance, 



152 Lenox 

with its " Brook Farm " reminiscences, writ- 
ten the winter after Hawthorne left Lenox, 
was here conceived, and to a great extent 
shaped, for Hawthorne only could write when 
he had distinctly conceived. He did not de- 
velop as he wrote, but conceived and then 
wrote ; although he had the faculty of, and 
great facility in, improvisation, he did not 
so write his great works. In July, just after 
finishing TJic Wonder Book, he writes his 
friend Pike that he has in mind another ro- 
mance embodying " my experiences and obser- 
vations at Brook Farm." In Dr. Hale's recent 
book, Ja?ncs Russell Loiuell and His Friends, 
there is a hint of the laborious scholarship 
down at the bottom of Hawthorne's romances 
in a reference to a remark of Lowell, who was 
always using superlatives to describe Haw- 
thorne's genius. " Hawthorne," he said, 
"proved that our own past was an ample 
storehouse for the brightest works of imagina- 
tion or fancy." All that last summer Haw- 
thorne spent in Berkshire he was reading or 
thinkinor alono- the line of the comint^ Blithe- 
dale Romance. 

This, then, is the sum of the literary activ- 
ity of Hawthorne in Lenox, where he resided 
a year and a half so pleasantly, and all the 



With Hawthorne in Lenox i s 



Do 



more delightfully because at work, — " happy," 
as he himself said, " as mortal can be." And 
why not, pray ? — when Mr. Fields writes him, 
"Your books are printed in Paris, as much as 
in England " ; and Browning says, " Haw- 
thorne is the greatest genius who has appeared 
in English literature for many years " ; and 
when the choice minds of Germany were al- 
ready buried deep and absorbingly in his pages, 
Amelie Botta writing him: "We know The 
House of the Seven Gables, which is a lesson to 
family pride. You write as if you wrote for 
Germany." These testimonies came just a 
few weeks after leaving Lenox, but they have 
to do with the Lenox work. 

Yet Hawthorne has met an enemy in the 
Berkshire climate with its sudden changes and 
longs to get away. He does not actually bid 
farewell to Berkshire until late November, 
1 85 1, but there are hints six months before of 
the coming departure. In May he writes 
Longfellow : " My soul gets troublous with 
too much peace and rest. ... I need to 
smell sea-breezes and dock mud and to tread 
pavements." But in July it seems as if his 
plans to leave Lenox might be indefinitely 
postponed. 

" We intend to take Mrs. Kemble's house in October 



154 Lenox 

or the beginning of November," he writes his friend 
Bridge, July 22d. " We shall lose a beautiful prospect 
and gain a much more convenient and comfortable 
house. ... I mean to buy a house before a great 
while, but it shall not be in Berkshire. I prefer the sea- 
coast." 

Two days later he writes another friend : 

" I do not feel at home among these hills and should 
not like to consider myself permanently settled here. I 
am continually catching cold and am none so vigorous 
as I used to be on the sea-coast. The same is the case 
with my wife." 

Seven days later, Hawthorne, who is stay- 
ing with Julian alone in the " Red Shanty," or 
" La Maison Rouge," as he styles it inter- 
changeably, while Mrs, Hawthorne is away for 
a few weeks with Una, has the following entry 
in the daily journal : 

" This is a horrible, horrible, most hor-ri-ble climate, 
one knows not for ten minutes together, whether he is 
too cool or too warm, but he is always one or the other, 
and the constant result is a miserable disturbance of the 
system. I detest it ! I detest it !! I detest it !!! I hate 
Berkshire with my whole soul and would joyfully see its 
mountains laid fiat." 

A few weeks later Mrs. Hawthorne writes 
her mother, September 7th : 

" It is very singular how much more we are in the 
centre of society in Lenox than we were in Salem, and 



With Hawthorne in Lenox 155 

all literary persons seem settling around us. But when 
they get established here, I dare say we shall take flight.'" 

The next month the plan of taking the 
Kemble place was given up, and by October 
iith, the plan for leaving Berkshire had ma- 
tured, for on that date Hawthorne writes 
Bridge : " We shall leave here, with much 
joy, on the first day of December." And in- 
deed, their departure was a little sooner than 
the date set, for on November 21, 1851, ap- 
pears this entry in the Diary : " We left 
Lenox in a storm of snow and sleet." Julian 
remembers that five house cats, pets of the 
family, followed them down the road a piece, 
as they rumbled off with their trunks in a 
farmer's wagon. It was a dreary leave-taking 
of Berkshire and its charming scenic beauty, 
blurred in the November storm ; but the 
Lenox residence of Nathaniel Hawthorne had 
ofiven to the recrion some of its most cherished 
memories and traditions, as it had given to 
him some of his grandest inspirations. 

Lenox preserved the memory of the Haw- 
thorne visit by repeated pilgrimages out to the 
border of the town where the " little red house " 
stood, and many were the strolls and drives 
hither to this literary shrine during those days 
the house was standing. Its owner, who Is 



156 Lenox 

possessed of many gentlemanly and scholarly 
qualities, — "a horn of benefits," Mrs. Haw- 
thorne called him, — took pleasure in keeping 
the house as its distinguished occupant left it. 
Sad was the day, twelve years ago, when the 
house went up in smoke, but the site forever 
remains, though the view from it is greatly 
marred by the growth of trees. An effort has 
been made to mark the site with an appropriate 
memorial ; one very distinguished gentleman 
in the field of letters suggesting to me an 
exedra, a sort of wayside shrine with seat, 
where one may vividly call up the memory of 
the great novelist in the presence of the in- 
spiring view he loved. The street leading 
out to this site has already been renamed in 
honor of Hawthorne. The village library has 
a table which once was his, though the one 
on which he wrote The House of the Seven 
Gables is in the Athenaeum, Pittsfield. Various 
charred relics of the " old red house " are pre- 
served in the reo^ion round about. 

Few other material reminders of the pres- 
ence of this mighty workman are left. The 
villaee retains the tradition that he was mo- 
rose, because he was "silent." " Speech," said 
Ellis, "was travail to Hawthorne"; and with 
this accords Emerson's testimony : "It was 



With Hawthorne in Lenox 157 

easy to talk to Hawthorne, only he said so 
little that I talked too much." Mrs. Brown- 
ing, who met him at Rome, said of him : " It is 
not his way to converse." It is easy to see, 
then, how the impression got abroad in Lenox 
that he was morose ; and this impression was 
strengthened by what Longfellow calls " the 
same old dull pain that runs through all his 
writings." He was not melancholy, as wife 
and children and friends attest, as passages of 
sublime optimism everywhere in his writings, 
a continual play of humor, and a steadfast ap- 
plication to toil prove. He diagnosed sin to 
heal, not to expose. He made sin sinful and 
repellent, not attractive. His books were all 
of them written with a purpose, and therefore 
they all have a message. The Puritan sur- 
vived under his graceful, transparent diction. 
He was "gray and grand," says Longfellow 
writing of him in 1863, " but there was some- 
thing very pathetic about him"; and Motley 
four years earlier writes : " Hawthorne is the 
most bashful man, I believe, that ever lived, 
certainly the most bashful American . 
but he is a very sincere, unsophisticated, kind 
person and looks the man of genius he un- 
doubtedly is." It is so easy to mistake silence 
for moodiness, bashfulness for sullenness, a 



158 Lenox 

disposition to avoid men for an inclination to 
dislike them, quiet for morbidness, that it 
is small wonder those outside the charmed 
circle of friendship misjudged him. 

We are not concerned here with the subse- 
quent story of Hawthorne's career. Books 
followed and a Liverpool consulate with long 
residence abroad and a return to America in 
the most critical of the ante-bellum days, just 
before the outbreak of the Civil War, when 
he wrote one of his greatest romances, The 
Marble Faun. A Democrat, and the intimate 
friend of Franklin Pierce, " the Northern 
man with Southern sentiments," Hawthorne 
met rebuff and stigma in his old haunts. 
Whittier and the whole abolitionist school had 
little patience with slavery apologists and al- 
lowed only short shrift to those who went not 
to their lengths. But a passage in Haw- 
thorne's Diary, " I am an abolitionist in feel- 
ings, if not in principle," goes far to redeem 
him in the minds of those who felt the passion 
of the slavery reform like a consuming fire 
within their breasts. He died during the pro- 
gress of the war and towards its close, broken- 
hearted because brothers were in conflict. He 
was laid to rest under the pines in his loved 
Concord, on a matchless day in late May, the 



With Hawthorne in Lenox 159 

orchards and meadows clad in bloom and filled 
with song, — 

" Thoiigli all its splendor could not chase away 
The omnipresent pain," — 

and his burial was attended by his devoted 
friends, Longfellow, Emerson, Agassiz, Low- 
ell, Holmes, Whipple, and Pierce, who mourned 
sincerely, not the quenching of his productive 
genius only, but the going away of a congenial 
spirit, who had graced and refined and blessed 
and hallowed their fellowship. 

" There in seclusion and remote from men 
The wizard hand lies cold 
Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen 
And left the tale half told." 

It is not for me here to attempt an estimate 
of Hawthorne as a writer, Emerson says : " I 
never read his books with pleasure ; they are 
too young " ; and he frankly confessed he 
never could read one through. Moreover he 
advised the young not to read Hawthorne. 
Lowell, on the contrary, pronounces Haw- 
thorne " the rarest creative imagination of the 
century, the rarest in some ideal respects since 
Shakespeare ; the most original mind Amer- 
ica has triven to the world." Estimates will 
run between these extremes, but, unless I 



i6o Lenox 

mistake, the world agrees with Lowell, rather 
than with Emerson. Anyway, proud was the 
day for Berkshire which added the name of 
Nathaniel Hawthorne to the roll of those who 
have caused the lustre of their achievements 
to shine resplendently upon the county they 
honored, and proud will be the day when the 
hallowed site of the red house by the lake 
where Hawthorne wrought some of his might- 
iest creations shall be appropriately marked 
with some memorial to this master-workman : 
Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, though he wrote 
not in verse, possessed the soul of the poetic 
spirit, insight, and grace, and, though he was 
a stranger to the laws of musical numbers, 
sang his stern messages into the ear of the 
world with infinitely melodious rhythm and 
cadence. 




V 



MODERN LENOX 



NATURE'S inspiring canvas in a frame of 
Art, — this is the Lenox of to-day. More 
than half of the area of the township has 
passed into the possession of those who, with 
large means, have touched the olden picture 
of scenic charm only to adorn it. An urban 
class seeking rural retreats has added to the 
charm of the region by the creation of beauti- 
ful estates, and one is diverted for the moment 
from the scenery to the elegance of these ex- 
tensive properties, whose villas have been built, 
in recent years, upon an increasing scale of 
magnificence. The village itself has been 
transformed, its roads improved, trimmed, and 
kept free from dust, thus imparting a park-like 
appearance to the town ; and often during 
the "season," when handsome equipages are 
rolling along on every highway and the ex- 
ploring tourist on foot or wheel is abroad in 



lOi 



i62 Lenox 

the land (for the town is now on the beaten 
path of summer travel), one hears this ques- 
tion asked: " What is the effect of the incom- 
ing of wealth upon Lenox ? " 

The most immediate and perceptible effect 
of all this change in outward conditions has 
been a complete change in the internal life of 
the villao-e. The removal of the courts in 
1869 took out of Lenox the very core of its 
culture, and this was followed in the next 
twenty years by such a rush for building sites 
that landholders disposed of property and mi- 
grated. Farms that were worth $50 an acre 
for potatoes sold for $1000 per acre for build- 
ing purposes. Ten years before the courts 
were removed the village property of Judge 
Pierpont — sometime Minister to England — 
was sold for $5600. Another village prop- 
erty, hardly more than a stone's throw off, 
with a finer view, but containing only two 
acres and a third, sold scarcely more than ten 
years after the removal of the courts for 
$35,000 to the family of a member of Presi- 
dent Arthur's cabinet. The land on which 
the present Episcopal church, rectory, and 
parish-house now stand — a triangular tongue 
of about half an acre — cost the society $ 1 9,000. 
This scale of prices was established propor- 



Modern Lenox i6 



o 



tionately throughout the township as soon as 
the Hghtning of pubhc favor struck it. Prices 
have receded somewhat from those inflated 
values, but the normal value of real estate to- 
day is still very high and will be kept so. 

It is, therefore, easy to see that the Yankee 
saw his opportunity and left. He would n't 
have been a Yankee if he had not. A little 
of the old New England stock still survives, 
but it is a remnant. A different order has 
come about. In place of the New England 
yeomanry have come the summer residents and 
the caretakers of the great estates. The whole 
personnel in the public places, in the churches, 
has entirely changed. The character and na- 
tionality of the citizens of Lenox differ toto 
coelo from what they were fifty years ago. 
Municipal conditions have arisen more dif^cult 
to cope with, and the literary atmosphere once 
breathed in this old student-towni has dimin- 
ished. Another generation has arisen which 
knows not Miss Sedgwick, and which is a 
stranger to the intellectual and social prestige 
of the ancient Berkshire capital. 

But if the unmakintr of the old town has 
proceeded with the making of the new resort, 
it may with equal justice be said that the 
losses which Lenox has suffered have not been 



i64 Lenox 

without compensations. Aside from the pres- 
ence of great wealth here, as a source of 
patronage and as the element which con- 
tributes the most heavily to meet the town's 
annual budget of expenses, and aside from the 
many inspirations to right living which an af- 
fluent class " rich in good works " can and 
does present to those who are less favorably 
circumstanced, Lenox has enjoyed very many 
benefactions at the hands of those who have 
appropriated these heights as building sites. 
Fifty years ago Mrs. Fanny Kemble-Butler 
presented to the town the clock which, though 
it somewhat outlived its usefulness as a time- 
piece, graced the belfry of the old village 
church until recently. It has now been re- 
placed by another, the gift of Morris K. Jesup, 
Esq. The purchase of the county Court-house 
by Mrs. Adeline E. Schermerhorn, in 1874, in 
order that she might present it to the town 
for a library building, has already been men- 
tioned. Later a public watering-trough of 
beautiful design, in memory of Miss Emma 
Stebbins, was given to the town by Mrs. C. 
C. Tiffany and Miss Wheeler, and later still 
Professor Thomas Egleston erected to the 
memory of General Paterson a fine shaft on the 
green in front of the hotel. Some years after 



Modern Lenox 165 

the gift by Mrs. Schermerhorn, her children, 
Mrs. R. T. Auchmuty and Mr. F. Augustus 
Schermerhorn, completed their mother's gen- 
erous and useful present by adding to the li- 
brary building what is known as the " Sedgwick 
Hall Annex," a most attractive assembly 
room and lecture hall. More recently Mr. 
John E. Parsons has given to the town a fine 
granite standard for a cluster of electric lamps. 
If we miorht include the crifts to the churches 
in the list of gifts to the town, it would be dif- 
ficult to stop the enumeration of gracious and 
fragrant alabaster-boxes whose sweet perfume 
is the memory of saintly lives. Many are 
these "memorials": the font and tablets in 
the Congregational church, the gift of David 
Egleston, in memory of his mother ; the cam- 
panile tower attached to the Episcopal church, 
the gift of Mrs. Auchmuty and Mr. Schermer- 
horn ; the chancel given by the Kneeland 
family as a memorial to a member of their 
household ; the choir room, the gift of Mr. 
Charles Lanier in memory of his wife ; the 
sweet-toned chimes presented by George H. 
Morgan, Esq., as a memorial to his wife, and 
the Trinity Parish House, a most useful and 
attractive structure, presented to the Episco- 
pal church by John E. Parsons, Esq., in 



1 66 Lenox 

memory of his wife. Mr. Parsons has, also, 
given to this church for its work in another 
part of the town, a handsome property with 
church (St. Helena Chapel) and parish-house 
in memory of his daughter. And, last, but 
by no means least, should be mentioned the 
generous donations of the summer residents, 
one and all, to the support of the Town 
Library, which contains fourteen thousand 
volumes, and which has greatly expanded its 
facilities through the active and munificent 
interest of its patrons who come to this hill- 
country at the annual hegira. 

I cannot close this part of my subject with- 
out the fear that I have omitted the mention 
of some deeds from this list of sweet minis- 
tries, and so I will erect an altar "To the Un- 
known Givers," whose many charities have 
relieved distress, but have never been known 
by the general public. Lenox receives all 
these public donations in a deeply appreciative 
spirit. It can no more do for itself what it 
once could in the way of artistic adornment ; 
but then it lacked the inclination; now, with a 
valuation of over three millions of dollars, it 
would seem as if it ought to lack neither 
the inclination nor the means. Modern Lenox 
should be the most beautiful town in the 



Modern Lenox 167 

world, with its superb scenery and magnificent 
estates. There is a susceptibihty to adorn- 
ment here as nowhere else. It will take all 
the polish wealth can put upon it. Its views 
should be treated artistically by cutting away 
some of its ornamental shrubbery. Its public 
buildings should be in harmony with their en- 
vironment, rich and substantial. Municipal 
regulations of a far-seeing character should be 
adopted, looking to the preservation of all this 
natural beauty. Gifts to the town should be 
made by individual donors, following the ex- 
amples of those who have in other days 
marked their affection for the place by public 
memorials. 

But the greatest gift to a town is the public 
spirit of its citizens, and there have been some 
among those who have created beautiful estates 
here who have given themselves to the town. 
" The best gift thou canst give to me," said 
Emerson " is a portion of thyself." It would 
be invidious to specify any when so many of 
the Lenox "cottagers" have taken such a 
deep interest in the town. Some men cannot 
live in a town without makino- themselves felt 
in it for o^ood. Such men among- others in 
Lenox were the late Colonel R. T. Auchmuty 
and Mr. Richard Goodman, Sr.; and there are 



1 68 Lenox 

many among the living whose piibHc spirit is 
a precious and a potent testimony of friend- 
ship for their adopted town, vying with that 
of those who are " to the manner born." 

Modern Lenox traces its beginnings as a 
place of fine estates and villas far back into 
the past. The magnificent prospect to the 
south, in which direction the town slopes down 
to two little lakes, with mountains rising be- 
yond, could not fail to attract those who de- 
sired to erect summer residences. It may be 
doubted whether the physical loveliness of the 
region was the only attraction, or whether the 
charm of a literary town, an academic centre 
for the country lying between the Hudson and 
the Connecticut, did not lure some. As the 
shire-town, also, with courts, a regular weekly 
newspaper, and a perfected system of stage 
routes, all of which, of course, led through the 
county seat, it possessed certain facilities not 
to be afforded in an inaccessible and isolated 
spot, where the scenery might have been 
equally as fine. We have seen that Mrs. 
Kemble's first visit in Lenox was in 1836, and 
that in the Berkshire Coffee-House (now 
Curtis Hotel) as early as 1838 the summer 
boarder was en evidence. The first estate to 
be created here was that of Mr. Samuel G. 



Modern Lenox 169 

Ward, in 1846, afterwards sold to Mr. Bullard 
and known now as Highwood, charmingly lo- 
cated on the heights above the northern 
shore of Lake Mahkeenac (Stockbridge Bowl). 
Charles Sumner, who spent September of 1844 
in Berkshire, recuperating from a severe ill- 
ness, passed several days with Mr. Ward in 
Lenox, and writes his friend, Sam. Howe 
(September loth): "Ward jolted us in his 
wagon to view the farms, one of which he 
covets." I take, also, this quotation from a 
letter of Oliver Wendell Holmes : " Pittsfield, 
August I 7, 1849. Rode my little horse over to 

Lenox this forenoon. Mr. 's place is one 

of the most beautiful spots I ever saw any- 
where. I visited it some years ago when it 
was building and it appeared to me perfect 
almost to a miracle"; and continuino- the de- 

' <z> 

scription of his visit at Lenox, Dr. Holmes 
mentions two other building sites which had 
been selected, " one by Mrs. Butler, ' the 
tragedy queen.' " Hawthorne, six months later 
(in the spring of 1850) came to this shire-town 
of the Berkshires, in the first glow of his liter- 
ary splendor, occasioned by the creation of 
his masterpiece, which he had just completed, 
and his work here for a year and a half, unre- 
mitting, productive immortal, drew attention to 



1 70 Lenox 

the town. Anyway, in the next five years the 
sales of real estate must have disclosed to the 
town at least a hint of its changing character. 

The beginnings of certain large estates which 
have remained practically intact until the pres- 
ent day are seen to emerge from that period, 
half a century ago ; they are tlVe Bullard and 
Tappan places, lying on the ascent from the 
north shore of Stockbridge Bowl, and just a 
stone's throw from the " little old red house " 
where Hawthorne wrought ; the Schermerhorn 
and Haggerty estates in the village, the latter 
now owned by George W. Morgan, Esq., of 
New York ; the Kemble place, known as " The 
Perch," and now the property of Mrs. Wil- 
liam Thompson, of New York ; the Aspinwall- 
Woolsey estate, now passed into the hands of 
a syndicate, and the Beecher farm, now a mag- 
nificent estate, for many years the property of 
General Rathbone, but at present belonging to 
John Sloane, Esq., of New York City. The 
locations of these estates will show that thus 
early in the history of the town as a resort, 
the beauty of the township as a zvhole was 
recoofnized. 

Topographically Lenox is a sort of "saddle- 
back," with the villa of Charles E. Lanier, 
Esq., " Allen Winden," high in the pommel, 



Modern Lenox 171 

and the Congregational church at the other 
end high in the rear, or vice versa, whichever 
you choose to call it, the land sloping off to 
the east and west from these eminences. 
From either side of "Allen Winden," whose 
name suggests its elevation, the land descends, 
to the west to two little lakes, one of which is 
" Stockbridge Bowl," on which are two of the 
estates previously named, and on the east to 
another little body of water, Laurel Lake. It 
was on this latter side that Mrs. Kemble-But- 
ler selected her building site in 1850, looking 
down upon the brightly glowing face of the 
mountain mirror as it caught the sun's rays in 
the morning, and beyond it to the Tyringham 
Pass, where the " Shadow Bridge," constructed 
by Richard Watson Gilder's poetic vision, 
spans the dell early in the afternoon. Fanny 
Kemble also looked off due east to the 
" Beecher farm," on rising ground a half-mile 
distant, purchased by the Rev. H. W. Beecher 
in 1853. Retracing our steps to the village, 
where Mrs. Adeline E. Schermerhorn bought 
in 1853 and built in 1859, "^^^ P^^s on and 
through, up the steep hill crowned by the vil- 
lage church, to the Woolsey estate immediately 
in the rear. On a little higher ground than 
that on which the church stands was situated 



172 Lenox 

this very large, thickly wooded, and hand- 
some property, acquired by Mr, E. J. Woolsey 
and Mr. W. H. Aspinwall at nominal prices 
from those who sold to them the well-timbered 
heights of their side-hill farms. It commands 
a prospect to the south that beggars descrip- 
tion : the town beneath, the glistening surface 
of Stockbridge Bowl far away to the right, 
and beyond, rising one above another as they 
recede into the farthest distance, the moun- 
tains, " Rattlesnake," " Monument," and " The 
Dome," the last 2800 feet in height, while 
close in on the western side of the landscape 
runs the " Taghconic " range, with the ton- 
sured summit of Bald Head near by, where a 
fine view of the Catskills may be obtained. 

This, then, was the beginning of the crea- 
tion of large estates in Lenox. In twenty-five 
years, or at the opening of the year 1880, when 
the author first made the acquaintance of this 
ancient capital, there had been added to these 
seven properties, twenty-six; and since 1880 
forty-two, making in all, not counting the same 
place twice where it has simply changed hands, 
during fifty years, seventy-five distinct places, 
showintr an increased ratio of grrowth. Such 
an aggregate of private property represents 
many millions of dollars. Villas, surrounded 



Modern Lenox 173 

by extensive, park-like grounds, overlook the 
landscape at different angles of vision, and dot 
the hillsides everywhere, many within a ra- 
dius of a mile from the Lenox post-office. 
Some of the most beautiful estates are within 
a radius of two miles, including a part of the 
northern section of the town of Stockbrido-e. 
and cover large areas of territory ; while a still 
longer radius would be required to include 
the handsome properties of all who belong 
to the Lenox colony. The author will not 
attempt to give with chronological nicety the 
order in the creation of these estates. When 
he knew Lenox first, in the spring of 1880, 
the town was in a chrysalis stage ; it was be- 
coming, it had not become. There were, it is 
true, many places here then, but the Berk- 
shire Hills were attracting only those who 
were in the secret of their charm. The estates 
which were in existence then were, in addition 
to those already described, as follows ; and it 
will be seen from their location that they 
were pretty generally distributed throughout 
the township. There was the property be- 
longing to the late Mr. Robeson, who bought 
the old Ellery Sedgwick place, created in 
1858 and greatly beautified by Professor Salis- 
bury, its next owner, in 1870. Farther away 



1 74 Lenox 

to the south, on what was formerly known as 
Walker Hill, were two lartre estates : the 
Bishop place, marking like the Robeson 
grounds historic sites in the growth of the 
county and town, and the Goodman property 
(the old Judge Walker place), acquired by Mr. 
Richard Goodman from the Hon. Judge Pier- 
pont in 1865, by whom it had been purchased 
from John Walker, Esq., in 1859. Farther 
away to tlie southeast was a cluster of estates 
grouped around Laurel Lake : the Schenck 
property then being laid out (for the last 
twelve years with other adjacent land merged 
in the Westinghouse estate), the Goelet farm, 
lately bought by F. K. Sturgis, Esq., and the 
Sargent and Dorr places, the latter now in 
the possession of Mr. R. W. Patterson. The 
old Beecher place was then owned by General 
Rathbone. Off to the west in addition to the 
Bullard and Tappan places were the estates 
belonging to Samuel Ward, Esq. (acquired 
and greatly enlarged ten years since by Mr. 
Anson Phelps Stokes) and the Geo. Higgin- 
son place. Within a mile of Lenox post- 
office at that time were the following smaller 
places, viz. : the properties belonging to Mrs. 
Joseph White, Mr. Alfred Gilmore, Mr. Park- 
man Shaw, Mr. Kneeland, Professor Egleston 



Modern Lenox 175 

(purchased by him from Judge Pierpont in 
1859 ^oi" $5600), the heirs of Charlotte Cush- 
man, Miss Furniss, Miss Carey, General Bar- 
low, General Oliver, Mrs. Kuhn, Geo. W. 
Folsom, Esq. (the old Brevoort place) ; while 
off to the northwest were the three very 
beautiful estates of John E. Parsons (since 
very extensively enlarged), Henry W. Braem, 
Esq. (present Winthrop place), and Dr. R. C. 
Greenleaf. To the east two miles from the 
centre of the town was the Dana place ; and 
to the north about the same distance the es- 
tate owned by Col. R. T. Auchmuty. 

It may be said that if all these estates were 
in existence prior to 1880 substantially the 
same as to-day, Lenox could hardly have been 
obscure at that time ; yet certainly it had not 
leaped into the world-wide notoriety it now 
possesses. In the last twenty-one years there 
has been going on an exodus of the Yankee 
farmer, and in place of his farms, great estates 
have come up as if by magic ; and what is 
more, with each year the modest summer 
house which once satisfied the summer resident 
here has given way before the more stately 
type of villa. Some of the most beautiful es- 
tates here have been created within the last 
twenty years ; many within the last ten. All 



1 76 Lenox 

varieties of domestic architecture are seen, 
from the Swiss chalet to the Tudor castle, 
from the colonial mansion to the turreted 
composite majestic in size and dignity, and 
from the plain summer house to the architec- 
tural perfections of the chaste Elizabethan 
structure or the grand and simple beauty of 
the Petit Trianon. Bridges of elaborate and 
solid pattern in granite grace the drives in 
some of the private grounds ; monoliths from 
Egypt and marble antiques adorn others. 
Each villa commands its own charming land- 
scape in which a lake is set as a pearl sur- 
rounded by emerald ; and it is needless to say, 
as the surpassing charm of Lenox is in its 
drives, a system of road-construction on the 
highways has, at great expense, been made 
possible, thus preserving this pleasure as a 
permanent and delightful feature of the mod- 
ern town. The Lenox of to-day, then, has 
the same old quiet dignity it always had, set 
in a lustre of glory ; Nature perfected and 
adorned by Art ; worth crowned with a re- 
splendent wreath of favor from those who 
lavish upon it the substantial proofs of their 
affection. 

And now I propose to take the reader with 
me on a few walks and drives about Lenox in 



Modern Lenox 177 

order that we may see some of these estates 
with their charmino- villas, A convenient 
place to start from will be the Paterson mon- 
ument, which stands at the "four corners" in 
the heart of the village. The adjacent elms 
of hoary age must feel lonely, indeed, as they 
have seen the busy generations come and go 
across the site now occupied by this granite 
shaft. A glance at its inscription is worth the 
while, and while we stand there I would like, 
though I forbear, to read you a page out of 
Fields's History of Be7'kshire (1829), or Hol- 
land's Western Massachusetts, to show the 
marches, the sufferings, the heroisms of the 
Lenox soldiers under Paterson in the Revolu- 
tion. General Paterson's monument in the 
centre of the town is a mute bugle-call to pa- 
triotism. The "four corners " where it stands 
are the meeting-place of two intersecting 
streets. Main and Walker, though the south- 
ern prolongation of Main Street is called 
"Court-house Hill" (more properly Stock- 
bridge Road), and the western extension of 
Walker Street is called from the monument 
West Street. Court-house Hill slopes off 
precipitously from Monument Square. West 
Street is a continuous but less abrupt descent 
for nearly a mile, and both these hills, with 



I ■j'^ Lenox 

"Church Hill" in the rear coming down to- 
ward the monument from the north, are merry 
with coasters in the season. Looking up from 
Monument Square toward the old village 
church-on-the-hill is one thing in June ; quite 
another in December. Hither came in all 
winds and weathers for eighty years the yeo- 
men and gentry of Berkshire for litigation, 
first to that little Court-house on the south- 
east corner which is now (1902) being moved 
off to make way for the imposing Town Hall 
in process of construction, and then after 1816 
to that grandly simple and stately building 
behind us, and just the flip of a stone up Main 
Street from the square where we are standing, 
the second Court-house, now known as Sedg- 
wick Hall. 

The first walk one takes in Lenox is up the 
heights risinor on the north of the town and 
known as Church Hill. On a typical " Berk- 
shire day, " clear, bracing, and exhilarating, 
one can walk miles with slight fatigue. An 
altitude of thirteen hundred feet, like that of 
Lenox at this Monument Square, where we 
are standing, is not too high for vigorous ex- 
ercise. The first building on our right as we 
turn to go away from the Paterson monu- 
ment is the Curtis House, which has recently 



Modern Lenox 179 

been greatly enlarged, transformed, and mod- 
ernized; and next beyond it stands Sedgwick 
Hall, where the Town Library finds ample 
hoLisinor jn this ancient and classic buildin(T, 
once the county Court-house. Adjoining this 
edifice on the north is Mr, W. C. Schermer- 
horn's property, for many years in the posses- 
sion of the county as the site of its jail. 
Twenty years ago the two modest cottages 
here standing were built in place of the old 
jail-house which had been moved off, and now 
the glow of altar fires replaces the glare of 
hate behind barred windows, greeting our 
fathers as they passed up and down the street. 
We pass on up Main Street noting, where 
Cliffwood Street runs off obliquely to the north- 
west, an old building on the opposite side of 
the street, with the date " 1803 " on its belfry, 
the venerable " Lenox Academy " to whose 
classic halls once came the youth within a 
radius considerably over fifty miles ; and if we 
might reckon a few students from New Jersey 
and South Carolina, the area of its influence 
would be seen to be enormous. Midway be- 
tween the Academy and yonder church-on- 
the-hill, we pass on our right the Roman 
Catholic church, built in 1873, though for 
twenty years before that the project of such a 



i8o Lenox 

building was mooted. And here we are at 
the top of the hill, a half-mile from Curtis's, 
face to face with a rare and classic specimen 
of old-time church architecture, the ancient 
village church built here in 1805 and dedicated 
to the service of God January i, 1806. This 
edifice replaced an older one that stood on the 
same site, a few rods farther south. Let us 
stroll out into the churchyard, or if you are 
not too tired climb the belfry tower. What a 
prospect ! One can easily understand now 
why this church is so conspicuous an object 
for miles around — you practically never get 
away from it. I myself have seen it over on 
the heights of Monterey, fourteen miles away. 
But we must not forget our quest, and so 
we will leave the scenery which has been so 
oft alluded to in this book, and try to locate a 
few of the " places " from our eyrie. It has 
been a favorite place for the generations to 
come, this church belfry, yet for the sake of 
a more extensive view, and the greater con- 
venience of seeing it, I am going to ask you 
to accept a chair by my side on the piazza of 
the Aspinwall Hotel, which has recently been 
built a little farther up this hillside, and which 
with its extensive sfrounds, its maa;nificent 
situation, its ample accommodations and mod- 



iii». 




■c^ 






K 



Modern Lenox i8i 

ern facilities enters this year upon its career 
of promise. By a " turn of the eyeball," as 
Mr. Beecher said, your eye sweeps the far-off 
horizon from Greylock to Taghconic Dome. 
Lenox lies down immediately beneath you. 
Our aerial point of view does not disclose the 
location of all the estates, but will reveal 
salient features. Out of Stockbridge Bowl, 
three miles off there to the southwest, rises on 
the right " Bald Head," on whose sides as 
they slope down many hundred feet into the 
lake we can see beautiful summer villas. 
Here is, among others much smaller, the nine- 
hundred-acre estate of Anson P. Stokes, Esq., 
" Shadowbrook," adorned with a grand and 
palatial castle in granite of composite archi- 
tecture. On the other side of the "Bowl" 
rises " Rattlesnake," and between us and it a 
very high knoll on which is perched " Allen 
Winden," the charming villa of Charles Lanier, 
Esq., whose many acres adjoin some of the 
largest estates in Lenox. The land descends, 
as we have said, on either side of " Allen 
Winden " to two small lakes. Across the 
waters of the one, Lily Pond, on rising ground 
lies " Wheatleigh," owned by Henry H. Cook, 
Esq., with the belfry of the Curtisville village 
church in the far distance ; at the steep western 



i82 Lenox 

side of the other, Laurel Lake, stretches 
over a vast acreage " Erskine Park," the estate 
of the distinguished inventor, George West- 
inghouse, Esq., with the tall and slender spire 
of the Lee village church in the distance, 
erect and white against its mountain back- 
ofround, and the lake in the foreo^round. 
Between these two lakes lie " Interlaken," be- 
longing to the heirs of the late D. W. Bishop, 
Esq., and " Elm Court," the property of Wil- 
liam D. Sloane, Esq., either of which two last- 
named estates covers a vast area of territory. 
" Elm Court " was created by Mr. Sloane in 
1887, though greatly enlarged since by exten- 
sive acquisitions of adjacent property. 

Turning our eyes now far around to the 
left, on the crround risinor out of Laurel Lake 
to the east and north, and touching the very 
waters themselves, are the Wharton, Sargent, 
and Goelet estates ; while back of them on 
still hiorher grround, formintr a sort of concen- 
trie quadrant, are the Foster, Barnes, John 
Sloane, and Paterson estates, all large and 
adorned with beautiful villas. We do not see 
all these places from where we are sitting ; 
but we see pretty nearly where they are. We 
shall see them more closely when we come to 
eo out to them in our drives about Lenox. 



Modern Lenox 183 

All of them are of comparatively recent con- 
struction, though one, that of John Sloane, 
Esq., " Wyndhurst," is on the old Beecher 
place. In a way it may be said that the ridge 
from our height of observation to the Lanier 
place and on beyond to the Westinghouse 
estate is a sort of divide, with the waters of 
one side flowing ultimately into Stockbridge 
Bowl, and those of the other side reaching at 
last Laurel Lake. Each of these two longi- 
tudinally divided sections of the town has its 
distinctive view ; each was early recognized in 
the development of the place into the resort it 
has become. If now we turn our eyes to the 
northward where Greylock stands up clearly 
in the far-off northern horizon, we cfet another 
distinct section of Lenox, and here two miles 
away from the Aspinwall are the estate of the 
late Col. R. T. Auchmuty, " The Dormers," 
and, nearer, that of the late William H. Brad- 
ford, Esq., " Wayside." These are large es- 
tates, charmingly situated on high ground 
commanding views of Greylock, the Housa- 
tonic River up and down its tortuous course, 
the beautiful October Mountain rising abruptly 
from the opposite bank of the winding stream, 
and off in the opposite direction the mas- 
sive mountain ramparts of the Taghconics, 



184 Lenox 

with " Yokun's Seat " conspicuous against them, 
as though that ancient chieftain were fortified 
by natural barriers against the dwellers in 
Mount Ephraim (Richmond) on the other 
side. Nestled under "Yokun's Seat," though 
itself on very high ground, is the estate of 
Thomas Shields Clarke, the sculptor. 

But so far our glance has been out upon the 
township rather than down upon the town. 
Look down now, sheer down, say three hun- 
dred feet from this sightly piazza where we 
are sitting. We are upon the edge of a bluff. 
The golfers going the rounds in the links be- 
low us seem moving miniatures. Half-way 
down the steep bluff, and a little to the left, 
are two handsome estates commanding, though 
lower, much the same view as we are seeing, 
" Belvoir Terrace," the property of Morris 
K. Jesup, Esq., President of the New York 
Chamber of Commerce, and " Under Ledge," 
belonging to Joseph W. Burden, Esq. 

Down there on the lower level, among many 
other smaller estates, all of which are situated 
on high enough ground to command prospects 
which vie with the one stretching out before 
our eyes, are three estates created twenty-five 
years ago : " Windyside," with its Swiss chalet, 
owned by Dr. Richard C. Greenleaf ; " Ethel- 



Modern Lenox 185 

wyn," the property of Mrs. Robert WInthrop, 
lately purchased of the Henry Braem estate, — 
another part of the same estate having been 
purchased by Dr. Henry P. Jaques and called 
" Home Farm " (that is it that we see with its 
English manor-house yonder to the right) ; 
and the other one of the three estates named is 
" Stonover," the very large and beautiful es- 
tate belonging to John E. Parsons, Esq. Mr. 
Parsons's property has been very greatly en- 
larged since his original purchases twenty-five 
years since, by the acquisition of a tract of 
adjoining marshland which has been drained 
and transformed into a park, which the public 
very generally and gladly avails itself of for 
drives. I think I have indicated the locations 
of the larg-est estates in Lenox with the ex- 
ception of two which lie off to the east of us, 
the villas belonorinof to the same being- in the 
heart of the town itself, but a stone's throw 
from the campanile tower of Trinity Church, 
yonder, far to the left : " Ventfort Hall," built 
by George H. Morgan, Esq., an Elizabethan 
manor-house, large, rich, chaste, and simple, 
and " Pine Croft," the summer home of F. 
Augustus Schermerhorn, Esq., whose long 
residence, extensive holdings of realty, and 
deep interest in Lenox make him, like so 



1 86 Lenox 

many others of the summer residents here, 
seem as much a part of the town as those who 
have been born and bred within it. 

I have not tried to indicate with any com- 
pleteness the locations of all the estates, villas, 
and summer cottages in Lenox ; only what 
could be seen in the main from the lofty " As- 
pinwall," which crowns the crest of this bluff 
on the old Woolsey place, one of the oldest 
estates in the town. Let us now descend to 
the churchyard where sleep the generations of 
the Lenox dead ; a cemetery whose prospect 
is hardly less entrancing than the one at which 
we have been lookinor from the heifjhts above. 
The street which runs past this ancient church- 
yard is the base of an isosceles triangle with 
its apex in the village at the junction of Main 
and Cliffwood streets, and in each angle of 
this triangular section is a "summer-place": 
" Edge Road," in the apex, owned by Mrs. A. 
C. Kingsland, while up here at either end of 
the base line are " Hillside," purchased by 
Mrs. Hartman Kuhn, October 27, 1870, so 
the local press of that period stated, for $1600 
(!), and " Breezy Corners," owned by Mrs J. 
Williams Biddle. Standing here at " Breezy 
Corners " with " Belvoir Terrace " rising high 
at our back we see up the road leading to the 



Modern Lenox 187 

village, the Livingston estate with its pleasing 
villa, "Osceola Lodge," " Sunnyridge," the 
property of Geo. W. Folsom, Esq., " The 
Homestead " the village property of Anson 
Phelps Stokes, Esq., formerly owned by 
Charles F. McKim, the architect, and in the 
opposite direction " Deepdene," the estate of 
Dr. F. P. Kinnicutt, while in front of us, at 
the side of " The Homestead," whose villa is 
of unique architectural design, opens Yokun 
Avenue, with the estate of Mrs. E. G. Bacon 
on the right, adjoining the golf grounds. As 
we are out on this "walk" to get an idea of 
the general location of the estates in Lenox, 
our return to the Paterson monument will be 
by the way of Yokun Avenue to West Street, 
where turning to the left we soon arrive at the 
place from which we started. On the way 
hither from " Breezy Corners " we pass just 
beyond the entrance to the golf links the en- 
trances to " Windyside," " Ethelwyn," " Ston- 
over," all of which we saw from above; and 
now continuing our way we pass on the 
right the entrance to the extensive " Stonover 
Park " and on the left the two pretty and 
modest villas of Miss Mary DeP. Carey and 
Miss C. Furniss, " Gusty Gables " and " Edge- 
comb." It is still very high ground here, 



1 88 Lenox 

although we have made such a descent to reach 
it, and the same enrapturing landscape has 
greeted and rested the eye at every step. We 
make our way on to West Street, where on 
the corner at our right stands the old " Char- 
lotte Cushman cottage," given by Miss Cush- 
man to Emma Stebbins, the sculptor, and on 
our left the newly created summer-place owned 
by Mr. D. F. Griswold, while right before us 
lies the Robeson estate with an old English 
type of Gothic manor-house, built of stone and 
rather low, standing at the far end of a large and 
level lawn bordered with ancient elms. This 
house was built in 1858 by Mr. Ellery Sedg- 
wick, overhauled and repaired in 1871 by Pro- 
fessor Salisbury, its next owner, at an expense 
of $150,000, and after a few years' occupancy 
was sold to Mr. W. R. Robeson, who occupied 
it every summer until his death. The Robeson 
property is interesting as one of the historic 
sites in the days when Lenox was the county 
seat. Immediately adjoining this estate on 
the west is " Brookhurst," owned by the Shat- 
tuck heirs, but we turn and come up the 
hill, passing next beyond the Robeson place 
on the east a small estate owned by Mrs. 
Thornton K. Lothrop, and adjoining that 
"Cosy Nook," the summer home of Miss 




^ 






Modern Lenox 189 

Helen Parish. Opposite is " Fairlawn," be- 
longing to the heirs of Mr, Charles Kneeland, 
but one of the earliest " summer-places " in 
Lenox, having been originally owned by Mrs. 
Lee of New Orleans, one of the first comers 
to the Berkshire resort. Emerging from West 
Street on Monument Square, we pass on the 
southwest corner the beautiful property known 
as the " Bishop place," once the property of 
Judge Henry Walker Bishop, a prominent 
citizen of Lenox, who was elevated to the 
bench of the Court of Common Pleas. Since 
his death this estate has been owned by his 
son, Henry Bishop, Esq., of Chicago. 

And now just to get a closer view of some 
of the outlying estates we have been looking 
down upon from our far-off eyrie, I want to 
take the reader for a couple of drives on, let 
us say, some beautiful day in June; one shall 
be in the mornincr and one in the afternoon. 
We will start for our first trip from the Pater- 
son monument again, and driving up Main 
Street through Cliffwood, we pass on the left 
some small places, belonging respectively to 
J. Egmont Schermerhorn, Esq., B. K. Stevens, 
Esq., and Miss Anna Shaw, the latter the old 
Hotchkin place, for many years the residence 
of the cultured family of John Hotchkin, 



iQO Lenox 

principal of Lenox Academy and founder of 
Lenox Library, and reach at length the en- 
trance to " Stonover Park." It is the old 
" Belden Marsh" as the fathers knew it, but 
now the revelation of what a few tiles and the 
landscape gardener's art can do. We drive 
for a mile or more over perfect roadbeds, 
through wooded lanes and out in the "open," 
now a graded loop down some steep declivity, 
now a straight and level course between ranks 
of chestnuts, and at length reach the Ston- 
over farm building-s under the crest of Bald 
Head. On we go over the country road to 
" Shadowbrook " a mile away and by an easy 
ascent throutrh the Stokes estate are soon on 
the summit of the tonsured mountain, looking 
off on one of the loveliest landscapes in the 
world, with the picturesque and broken chain 
of the Catskills making a ragged sky-line fifty 
miles to the west. We descend to the palatial 
villa on this vast estate ; large, turreted, baro- 
nial, from which the spacious lawns go sweep- 
ing down almost to the very edge of peaceful 
Mahkeenac, — everywhere the most trans- 
porting scenery, the fresh and luxuriant leaf- 
age, the liquid notes of the bobolink, the 
variegated carpet of the fields, all the rich 
shades and tints, the different hues of bkie in 



Modern Lenox 191 

sky, and lake, and far-off mountains, and the 
commingled perfume of lilac, syringa, and the 
wild flora of the regfion. Here at " Shadow- 
brook " we see, for the looking, a cluster of 
fine estates. Adjoining Mr. Stokes on the 
south is " Lakeside," owned by Charles Astor 
Bristed, Esq., while back of us on the higher 
slopes of Bald Head are " Bonnie Brae," 
owned by Henry Barclay, Esq., and " The 
Orchard," belonging to H. H. Pease, Esq. 

We make an abrupt turn here and take the 
Hawthorne road, which runs on high ground 
alongr the northern side of Stockbridg^e 
Bowl, and almost immediately pass through 
the very heart of three fine estates on both 
sides of the highway, the villas being on the 
still higher ground on the left : " The Cor- 
ners," owned by Geo. Higginson and acquired 
by him in i860; " Tanglewood," which is the 
old Tappan place, a beautiful estate which 
was created more than fifty years ago ; and 
" Highwood," owned by the heirs of the late 
Mr. Wm. S. Bullard, who boucrht this estate 
of Mr. Samuel Ward, by whom it was laid out 
in 1846, the oldest private estate in Lenox. 
This section of the town is trebly interesting ; 
first, on account of its rare scenic beauty ; 
again, because this is the starting-point of 



192 Lenox 

Lenox as the resort of those who by affluence 
and rare taste have created magnificent estates; 
and still again, because of the memories of 
Hawthorne. We are passing now on the 
right the site of the " little old red house " 
where Hawthorne wrote his House of the Seve^i 
Gables. The genius of Hawthorne is here 
" writ large " on the landscape, on the very 
names of the estates, on the road along which 
we are being driven. A half-mile farther on, 
and around a picturesque turn through some 
tall pines, called " Lovers' Lane," we come to 
" Wheatleigh," with its spacious and stately 
Italian villa, — an estate of some hundreds of 
acres belonging to Henry H. Cook, Esq.; and 
here by a very steep grade and a spiral descent 
we reach the edge of the lake, across whose 
inlet we bowl. 

Almost immediately we turn abruptly to the 
left, into the truly great estate of the late D. 
W. Bishop, Esq., " Interlaken." A secluded 
carriage road skirts the wooded bank of the 
inlet for a mile into the heart of primeval 
forest where the road winds steeply upward 
many hundred feet amid grand old trees, to 
the heights above, and the highway (Stock- 
bridge Road). Reaching this point and turn- 
ing to the south we drive on to " Erskine 



Modern Lenox 193 

Park," the extensive and beautiful estate of 
Geo. Westinghouse, Esq., passing as we go 
thither many fine places, — " The Poplars " 
recently purchased of the Philip Sands estate 
by S. Frothingham, Esq., " Merry wood " op- 
posite, on the right, owned by Charles Bullard, 
Esq., and the very extensive property of Wil- 
liam D. Sloane, Esq., " Elm Court," a grand 
estate lying along the road here, and the cross- 
roads, for three miles, its beautiful villa, 
built near an ancient elm, being charmingly 
situated on a commanding eminence nearer the 
village. We shall see it on our return. But 
here we are at the junction of Stockbridge 
Road and Kemble Street, where we enter the 
Westinghouse grounds, lying in the extreme 
southeastern part of the town. Miles of spa- 
cious white roads thread their way by graceful 
turns through vast sweeps of lawn, dotted 
here and there with most beautiful old elms, 
and now the long driveways skirt, and now 
they cross by massive bridges, an artificial lake 
(in which are ^vej'ets d'eau), until they encircle 
the handsome, white villa which stands half a 
mile from the entrance on a high elevation of 
land rising abruptly three hundred feet out 
of Laurel Lake. What a charming prospect 
is here ! We have been for the most part 



194 Lenox 

looking into the other valley where Stockbridge 
Bowl peacefully reposes at the base of the 
Tatrhconics. Here is another " mountain mir- 
ror," the beautiful Laurel Lake, which forms 
the centre-piece in the landscape for a dozen 
places grouped around it. Directly across 
the lake, as we stand here near the " Erskine 
Park" villa, the Hoosacs rise with an average 
altitude of two thousand feet, October Moun- 
tain lies empurpled in the evening glow, while 
on and on the mountains stretch toward the 
north where twenty miles away Greylock 
rises over all. Immediately beneath us lies 
the placid lake, around to the left rise the 
terraced heights of Lenox adorned with many 
beautiful villas, and as we turn to retrace our 
way to the entrance we see across the sunlit 
lawn the awesome majesty of Rattlesnake, 
fifteen hundred feet, darkly standing against a 
westering sun. Glimpsing the ever-present 
scenery through the trees as we return by an- 
other drive to the entrance, we see from one 
point the terminal mountains at either end of 
the county, Greylock and the Dome, and also 
look around the spur of Rattlesnake to still 
Mahkeenac at the base of Bald Head, 

We make our way back to the village along 
Stockbridofe Road once more in order that we 



Modern Lenox 195 

may see at closer range some handsome prop- 
erties and villas which on their very sightly 
elevations we have been seeino- before at a 
distance. A short way beyond the place 
where we entered this highway by the steep 
wood-road through the "Interlaken" estate, 
we drive for a mile on Telford Road, built at 
private expense, along the ridge which divides 
Lenox into two valleys. This is all very high 
ground through here, commanding superb pros- 
spects. On the left we see " Elm Court," the 
spacious residence of Wm. D. Sloane, Esq., 
looking off on a most enchanting landscape, 
two lakes in the foreground of the picture and 
a background of mountains reaching up and 
down the valley for miles in either direction ; 
on the right, opposite, the " Interlaken " villa 
which looks into the other valley and off upon 
its glistening lake, a most picturesque bit of 
landscape. Farther on we pass an old-time 
bit of domestic architecture, "Yokun," an 
eighteenth-century survival which was built in 
1794 by Judge William Walker of Lenox, but 
for many years, with its fine acreage, was the 
property of the late R. Goodman, Sn, and now 
owned by his heirs. It is most sightly ; almost 
as much so as its more fashionable neighbor 
"Allen Winden" farther up the slope. It 



196 Lenox 

looks off upon both valleys and the three 
lakes. Beyond " Yokun " on the left, high up 
on the very crest of the ridge, stands " Allen 
Winden," the handsome summer residence of 
Charles Lanier. Esq., whose wife was the 
great-granddaughter of General Paterson, and 
who himself has given proof of the depths of 
a lonof and sincere attachment for Lenox in 
many substantial ways. Across from " Allen 
Winden " is " Maplehurst," the beautiful estate 
of Mrs. Joseph M. White, whose friendship 
for Lenox extends over so many years, and 
who has endeared herself, as have so many 
others, by opportune ministries to the people 
of the town. Coming this way toward the 
village once more, we pass in order three 
places, " Lithgow Farm," " Plumsted," and 
" Redwood," belonging respectively to Clinton 
G. Gilmore, Esq., Joseph S. Whistler, Esq., 
and S. Parkman Shaw, Esq., the last-named 
place being within a stone's throw of the Pat- 
erson monument only a few rods down Court- 
house Hill. 

A fresh pair of horses in the afternoon, if 
you are not filled to satiety and fatigue by the 
morning's excursion, will enable us to "do" 
the rest of the town by a short drive in the 
direction of the neighboring town of Lee, 



Modern Lenox 197 

along the new " State Road " and back by 
Kemble Street. We start once more from 
the Paterson monument in front of Curtis's, 
and take Walker Street out to the eastward. 
The new Town Hall stands on our right, op- 
posite the hotel. We pass on the left Church 
Street, a little way down which is the Metho- 
dist church, organized early in the nineteenth 
century. On the right we see at once, here 
in the very centre of the village, not two hun- 
dred feet from the Monument, what was 
hidderi before — the same lovely, far-stretching 
" view " which we saw from the piazza of the 
hotel on the high hill yonder. The " view " 
is everywhere ; you have not to go anywhere 
to get it ; it is always before you, except 
where the thick settinor of ornamental hedo^e 
has shut it out, and then the enchanting pros- 
pect is aggravatingly just over the hedge. 
As we drive along Walker Street our atten- 
tion is constantly arrested by the glimpses 
of the magnificent landscape through the 
trees. 

On the right we quickly reach, where Kemble 
Street diverges, the handsome Episcopal church 
property, with its church edifice, parish-house, 
and rectory, all of blue Berkshire limestone. 
The ecclesiastical organization connected with 



198 Lenox 

this church is quite old. Services accord- 
ing to the Episcopal order of worship were 
held in the town as early as 1771, and regu- 
larly after 1793, though the " Mission " here 
was carried on jointly with the church in 
Stockbriclge for some years. But Trinity 
Episcopal Church, Lenox, hardly became self- 
supporting until 1856, when its rector at that 
time, the Rev. W. H. Brooks, stated in his 
annual report : " In the summer season Lenox 
being a great resort our congregations during 
that portion of the year are always of good 
size and frequently fill the church," and he adds 
that the whole number of communicants be- 
lonsfinor to the local church was at that time 
fourteen. To-day the condition of the Episco- 
pal church is far in excess of the promise of 
fifty years ago. The present property was 
acquired in 1887, and with the phenomenal 
growth of Lenox as a place of resort and of 
fine estates, this church has greatly strength- 
ened its stakes. It is the church of the sum- 
mer residents, owns a valuable property with 
church edifice and parish-house in an outlying 
section of the town, helps liberally every good 
cause in the county, and has greatly increased 
its roll of communicants. It was only after a 
eood deal of discussion that this site was 




^ 



^ 



^ 



Modern Lenox 199 

determined upon for the new church, but it is 
an ideal one. 

Opposite the church as we drive on past 
" Trinity," down the beautiful State Road which 
leads over four miles of macadam to Lee, we 
pass on the left next to "Lenox Club" the 
cottage of Mrs. William C. Wharton, " Pine 
Acre," and still on beyond " Wynnstay," the 
property of Mrs. John Struthers. " Bel Air," 
next on the left and occupied for some years 
by Thatcher M, Adams, Esq., goes with the 
Morgan estate opposite, " Ventfort Hall," of 
which it is a part. "Ventfort Hall" villa is 
an Elizabethan architectural unity, as " Wynd- 
hurst" is Tudor, and " Bellefontaine," French, 
the last beinor modelled after the Petit Trianon. 
Domestic architecture that embodies some one 
central idea is always pleasing, and " Ventfort 
Hall " has the advantage of crowning one of the 
oldest estates in Lenox, the Haggerty place ; 
hence the avenues and trees have the dignity of 
age. Next beyond the estate of Mr. Morgan is 
the property of Mr. Schermerhorn, which ex- 
tends from here two miles to the east and 
embraces many hundred acres. On the left, op- 
posite, are " Sunnybank," owned by Mrs. Fran- 
cis C. Barlow, and just beyond " Thistledown," 
the property of David Lydig, Esq. Passing 



200 Lenox 

" Thistledown," the road turns abruptly to the 
right, and a mile farther on we reach five large 
estates. Immediately bounding Mr. Scher- 
merhorn on the south is the hundred and fifty 
acre tract of Giraud Foster, Esq., while oppo- 
site this property on the left we are passing 
the estate of Mr. John S. Barnes, " Cold- 
brooke," beyond which we come to " Wynd- 
hurst," the very extensive property of John 
Sloane, Esq. Mr. Sloane's property lies on 
both sides of the road, and the handsome villa 
in yellow pressed brick stands conspicuously 
to the left on high ground. On the next " four 
corners," two miles from the village of Lenox, 
three estates meet, "Wyndhurst," occupying 
two, and the properties of Mr. R. W, Paterson 
and Miss Sargent the other two. The Pat- 
erson place is, also, another one of the old 
estates of Lenox (the old Dorr place) ; and on 
the opposite corner looks off the modest cot- 
tagre of Miss G. Saro-ent on the charmingf 
Laurel Lake in the near foreground. 

We turn here and pursue our way along this 
northern side of the little lake, and are soon 
passing the estates of the late Robert and 
Ogden Goelet, Esqs., Robert W. Chapin, Esq., 
Mrs. John Struthers, and Edward R. Whar- 
ton, Esq. It is a drive of a mile from Miss 



Modern Lenox 201 

Sarofent's cottao-e to the Wharton villa, and 
here we turn towards the vlllagfe once more 
along Kemble Street, passing on the left " In- 
terlaken," " Maplehurst," and " The Perch," 
the latter once the home of Fanny Kem- 
ble, and on the right the stately villa in 
white marble, " Bellefontaine," belonofinof to 
Giraud Foster, Esq. The property through 
this section, as indeed we might say through- 
out the whole of Lenox, is simply one of large 
contiguous estates. Hereabouts the little 
Laurel Lake forms part of the picture, with 
the long white chalk-line made by the Lee 
village church spire against the mountains ; 
everywhere the rim of mountains ; everywhere 
at night the brilliantly illuminated mansions 
thickly sown ; everywhere beauty and restful- 
ness. Passing the Foster estate we are soon 
ascending the hill, leaving on the left " Clipston 
Grange," owned by Frank K. Sturgis, Esq., 
and " Sunnycroft " just beyond, on the same 
side, the property of George G. Haven, Esq. 
On the right the hedge half conceals the pala- 
tial " Ventfort Hall," and here we have at 
length reached "Trinity" once more just as 
the melodious chimes are vying with the syl- 
van minstrels to usher in the evening's peace. 
Opposite the church the " Frelinghuysen 



202 Lenox 

cottage " stands with its rigid lines against 
the sunset and far off on Bald Head the 
observer would see it now o'ertopping like a 
house of eold the crest on which we are stand- 
ing. Between it and " Sunnycroft " which we 
have just passed stands, among some pines, a 
house modest and old-fashioned enough to 
shrink from comparison with the modern villas 
about it, yet possessing the dignity and inter- 
est with which the memories of Catherine 
Sedewick invest it. Here on this old Sedg- 
wick property was Mrs, Charles Sedgwick's 
school for girls, and here in the half-hidden 
house through the trees was the residence for 
many summers of the gifted and voluminous 
author of stories which between 1822 and 
1858 captivated the reading world on both 
sides of the Atlantic : Kate Sedgwick, whom 
Donald G. Mitchell in his American Lands 
and Letters has styled " the charming old lady 
of the Berkshire highlands." 

We have returned again, passing on the left 
as we turned into Walker Street the fine old 
colonial cottage of the late Judge Julius Rock- 
well, to Monument Square and the Curtis 
Hotel. A hostelry on this very spot has dis- 
pensed hospitality for a hundred years, with a 
noteworthy succession of landlords during the 



Modern Lenox 203 

century, each having a long tenure of service. 
The present proprietor, Mr. Wm. D. Curtis, 
succeeded his father, William O. Curtis, in 
1894. Through the proprietorship of father 
and son extending over a period of fifty years, 
this hotel has maintained and greatly added to 
the high prestige it enjoyed in the earlier days, 
and now its later glory outshines all its pre- 
vious rivals on this same site. Its registers 
reaching back only through its present man- 
agement would be valuable to autograph col- 
lectors, such names appearing here as those of 
Lono-fellow, Charles Sumner, O. B. Frothing-- 
ham, Chester A. Arthur, John A. Andrew, 
Alfred Bierstadt, John A, Dix, George Mc- 
Clellan, Wm. T. Sherman, the Duke of Marl- 
borough, besides those of ambassadors from 
all foreign courts, leaders in finance and social 
circles here and abroad, and many, many others 
equally distinguished in all walks of life. To- 
day this famous hostelry with its architectural 
simplicity, its homelike interior, its etchings, 
its afternoon teas, its large and fashionable 
patronage, seems to have but entered into the 
realization of the promise of its humbler pred- 
ecessors, before whose doors the Hudson and 
Pittsfield stage with a winding of the horn, and 
a crack of the whip, and a circular sweep of 



204 Lenox 

narrow dimensions used to regularly but some- 
what dramatically and perilously deposit its 
load of passengers. Verily the very ground 
on which Curtis's stands to-day in its simple 
magnificence seems a palimpsest, from which 
the earlier record will not be rubbed out. 

The valuation of Lenox twenty years ago 
was a little over a million of dollars; in 1883, 
$1,599,411; and in 1900, $3,750,004, a phe- 
nomenal increase. With all this appreciation 
in property, due to the building here of great 
estates, has been going on a steady increase 
in population. The sturdy farmers of other 
days have been replaced by those who, as 
superintendents, gardeners, and care-takers of 
these vast properties, have made the flood-tide 
stronger than the ebb, and Lenox has thus 
been saved from the depopulation which has 
visited other Berkshire towns. The popula- 
tion of Lenox in 1800 was 1041 ; to-day it is 
not far from 3000. It was not till twenty 
years ago that the 2000 mark was reached, 
and though the origfinal Yankee element has, 
during these last twenty years, disappeared as 
never before, Lenox has added in that time as 
many to the population as in the eighty years 
preceding. The business conditions in Lenox 
are such as obtain in a " resort." Great in- 



Modern Lenox 205 

dustries that once turned out here manufac- 
tures of iron, glass, tin and willow ware are 
dead and well-nigh forgotten. One industry, 
that of the manufacture of glass, gasped its last 
expiring breath within twenty years, but its 
history reaches back many years. Indeed far 
back in the eighteenth century, the General 
Court made a grant of 1 500 acres in Berkshire 
to Mr. John Franklin and others, for the pur- 
pose of promoting glass-making at German- 
town, near Boston. This is known as the 
" Glass Works Grant," and was confirmed by 
buying the right of the Indians in 1757 for 
^28 los. It was located south of Lenox Fur- 
nace, and just east of the " Ministers' Grant " 
referred to in an earlier chapter. Glass was 
made at Lenox Furnace for years. Its budget 
of business, the making of plate-glass, bottles, 
etc., is a frequent item in the files of the 
county press, and specimens of its work may 
be seen in the patent office, Washington, D.C. 
The " Iron Works " went out of business some 
years before the manufacture of glass stopped, 
but its subterranean ofalleries and corridors 
actually honeycombed a section of the village 
on Main Street, so that on November 27, 
1862, a house standing on one of the streets 
fell through the crust and was buried up to 



2o6 Lenox 

the second story. Modern industrial condi- 
tions, combined with the pecuHar forces which 
were at work to make Lenox a place of resort, 
the removal of the courts in 1869, the prox- 
imity of a city on the north (Pittsfield, 25,000 
population), and the coming of the trolley 
have at times affected the local business, yet 
the tax budget was never so large, and the im- 
provements which the town has been able to 
have in recent years, through the presence 
here of a wealthy class, have made it privi- 
leged far beyond other towns with great mu- 
nicipal blessings : a perfect sewer system, 
water and electric-liehtincf, fine roads, oood 
schools, a splendidly equipped library, and the 
Town Hall, which has been built this year 
(1902) at an expense, with the land on which 
it stands, of $80,000. 

Such then is modern Lenox : beautiful for 
situation, imposing and impressive in its many 
palatial villas, and the park-like estates adjoin- 
ing. It can be compared with so few places 
of its class that its rank and charm and fame 
have conspired to give it the name, among 
those who are its rapt lovers, " Lenox, the 
only'' 



VI 

THE VICINAGE 



FROM GREYLOCK TO THE TAGHCONIC DOME ON 
THE WHEEL 

THE " Berkshires " are the foot-hills of the 
Green Mountains, which fork at the north- 
ern end of the county, and, running down its 
sides in parallel ranges, — the Hoosac and 
the Taghconic, — make its eastern and west- 
ern boundaries. Greylock, thirty-five hundred 
feet, commands the northern approach and 
salutes the rising morn on Monadnock and 
"Tom" far away; and the Dome, twenty- 
eight hundred feet, stands sentinel at the 
south. It is a country as prodigal of land- 
scapes as of bracing air. Through the very 
heart of it winds the Housatonic, deflected 
often to a right angle by some mountain bar- 
rier as it makes its way to the sea, ever 
deepening, ever broadening, turning the myriad 

207 



2o8 Lenox 

wheels of many industries, placid in the mead- 
ows, troubled near the towns. 

One may moralize, dream, aspire, rest in 
such a country, but the heresy obtains that 
one may not ride the bicycle there. Canoeists 
have paddled its river with many portages, 
and bicyclists have coasted its hills which they 
have climbed with many dismounts and trun- 
dlino-s. But is there no compensation to the 
wheelman in the picturesque landscapes and 
exhilarating "coasts," in the pure mountain 
air and restful wayside inns? And where 
such views, such "coasts," such tonic in the 
air, such fine roads, and such ideal inns as in 
Berkshire! Is there no compensation in visit- 
ing a section of country rich in historical 
and literary associations, studying its folk and 
customs, viewing Its fine estates and villas? 
And where such gratification as in Berkshire! 
Bicyclists, so far as Berkshire is concerned, 
may be divided into two classes : the sacred and 
the profane ; the first-named being those who 
are in rapt oneness with the loveliness and the 
traditions of the region ; the latter, those who 
worship their wheels, are oblivious to scenic 
beauty, and are attracted hither only to see 
fine estates. I was standing one day at a 
bend in the road where all of a sudden a burst 



The Vicinage 209 

of entrancing landscape opens out to the be- 
holder, and then is partly screened from view 
by two rows of trees so placed that what part 
of the scenery one does n't shut out the other 
will, when along came a party of bicyclists 
riding for dear life. The leader, who was 
familiar with the region, shouted, as they 
passed — or rather fairly whizzed — out of 
sight : " Now, boys, keep your eyes peeled. 
This is the finest scenery in Berkshire County! " 
And then a cloud of dust hid them from view, 
and I was left with the charming vision blurred 
by man's inappreciation. 

A wheelman in a hill-country should always 
pursue the general tenor of his way with the 
view before him rather than behind his back, 
and consequently Berkshire should be traversed 
from north to south. We will enter it through 
the Hoosac Tunnel, — that colossal feat in en- 
gineering, — at the northeastern end of the 
county. The tunnel is four and three quarters 
miles long (next to the longest in the world) 
and was finished in 1874, after nineteen years 
of toilsome labor, the loss of 136 lives, and an 
expenditure of $12,000,000, for which the 
State o:ave its credit. We emerore from the 
tunnel directly upon the beautiful manufac- 
turing city of North Adams, the largest city 



2IO Lenox 

in Berkshire County ; city of prints and shoes 
and many industries ; home of the State Nor- 
mal School ; a thriving and attractive iirbs in 
rure, right at the foot of Greylock. A day 
must be taken to make the ascent of the 
mountain, and though there are carriages in 
waiting to take you to its summit, we push on 
down the valley road to the smart manufac- 
turing town of Adams, made notable by the 
stay of President McKinley during a week he 
spent in the Berkshires the summer after his 
first inauguration. Leaving our wheels and 
liberally provisioning ourselves against the 
sure access of fierce hunger awaiting us on 
the peak of Greylock, where the means of 
gratifying the inner man have until recently 
been limited by what you carry, we eagerl}^ 
enter upon the laborious ascent. It is a 
rough and tortuous climb of four hours, allow- 
ing for rests by the way, following now a 
wood-road, now the dry bed of a mountain 
brook, now a somewhat uncertain opening 
through the forest, over logs and boulders, up 
steep inclines, tilted to nearly forty per cent., 
on and on with many rests until the top is 
reached, a weary climb of five miles, taxing 
every atom of strength and endurance, but 
more than compensated for in the grandeur 



'^^ 



^ 



2 

6 






The Vicinage 211 

of the prospect when once we stand upon the 
summit and scale the last staircase of the 
skeleton tower which rises there sixty feet. 

Berkshire lies beneath us, its lakes seeming 
like silver maple leaves fallen to the ground, 
its heights stunted; and immediately below us 
are the towns we have left, with their busy 
looms too far away to hear, and farther around 
at the base of the opposite slope, Williams- 
town, whose far-famed college and classic re- 
treats await us on the morrow. Far away to 
the north, and reflecting a slanting ray of the 
sun, the Bennington monument catches the 
eye against the blue background of the Ver- 
mont hills, out of which rise individual peaks ; 
to the east, over the Hoosacs, appears the 
observatory-capped summit of Mount Tom ; 
southward stretches Berkshire, while in the 
west appears a faint streak of silver, the 
mighty Hudson, and beyond, making a saw- 
toothed sky-line, the jagged chain of the" 
Catskills. It is a o-ood introduction to a 
Berkshire trip, wedged, as the country is, into 
three States, Vermont, Connecticut, and New 
York ; and gives us a sort of bird's-eye view of 
the country we are to cover. Let us say in- 
cidentally as we descend to our bicycles in 
Adams, that we shall sec no sublimer thing in 



2 12 Lenox 

Berkshire than the prospect we have left ; 
though many more picturesque bits of scenery, 
the fining- in of the picture so vast and grand 
on the heights of Greylock, charm and inspire 
the wheehiian as he rides from town to town ; 
now a vista opening here, now a pastoral with 
village-spire in the distance, now a mountain 
lake of pearl set in its emerald enclosure of 
mountains, now a path between the arching 
elms along the river side, now a magnificent 
expanse from some hill he is about to " coast," 
now an olden mill by the bridge, a deep fissure 
in the rocks, a beetling and overhanging cliff, 
now a peaceful dale where the sun early sinks 
to rest, now a neat trim farmhouse, now 
an abandoned group of buildings in the many 
"deserted villages" which abound in the bor- 
ders of Berkshire, and now expansive manors 
with well-kept grounds and parks stretching 
away from palatial mansions, commanding su- 
perb views and arresting attention by the di- 
versity in their architecture. 

It is only a short easy distance along a 
macadamized State road from North Adams 
to Williamstown, so we decide after wheeling 
in from Adams to push on to the college 
town for the night. It is the week after Com- 
mencement, and the village is bereft of its 



The Vicinaee 21 



't> 



student-colony, but Its hilly street, on either 
side of which are the substantial and hand- 
some college buildings, presents an attractive 
prospect, and tired as we are, though refreshed 
by supper, we set out to stroll in the grounds. 
The Mecca of all pilgrims is, of course, the 
" Haystack Monument," erected to perpetuate 
the memory of those valiant youths who here 
crave themselves to Christian work in foreion 

o o 

lands ; and with the thouo-ht in our minds that 
the movement of foreiofn missions in America 
was born on Berkshire soil, we return to the 
inn and to the dreamless sleep of the wheel- 
man. 

Williams College cannot be written about 
in a paragraph. It has passed its century 
mark ; its graduates are in all lands, doing 
efficient service ; its standards and results place 
it in the first rank of American colleges ; its 
condition is always prosperous and progres- 
sive, its location is perfectly entrancing ; and 
after another look about the buildings — and 
into them so far as we can — we turn our 
faces southward. It is a run of five miles to 
South Williamstown along the side of Grey- 
lock, and over a level piece of road, but 
thence on through the adjoining town of New 
Ashford to Lanesborough the grade is up. 



214 Lenox 

with many dismounts, but with ever-increasing 
loveHness of scenery as the higher levels are 
reached. The country through here is not 
yet pre-empted by the summer resident, and 
land is almost given away. Land which sells 
in Lenox at prices ranging from $1000 to 
$20,000 per acre sells in some parts of the 
county at from one dollar to four dollars per 
acre! Almost one whole township in Berk- 
shire has been bought by a well-known citizen 
of New York, at less than an average price of 
five dollars an acre! Lanesborough, through 
which we are now wheeling, and where we are 
shown the birthplace of Josh Billings, is one 
of these decadent towns, and yet only four 
miles from the city of Pittsfield, the county 
seat. On we push past placid Pontoosuc 
Lake, known to the Indians as Skoon-keek- 
moon-keek, and Pittsfield is soon reached. A 
morning's work has been accomplished, and 
after dinner we are at liberty to look around 
the city. 

Pittsfield is a distributing centre for miles 
around. It is six miles north of the geograph- 
ical centre of the country, but it stole the 
courts and county seat away from Lenox, 
thirty years ago, after tr)'ing in vain for 
fifty years before success crowned its efforts. 




'J'lic Huystiick MiHiiiinciit dt Williams ('ollci^e, 
Diarkiiii; the birthplace of American Foreign Missions, 
W'illiiimstown, Mass. 



The Vicinage 2 1 5 

Every one is glad now that Lenox is rid of 
the incubus of court-week, county jails, and 
hangings, and Pittsfield can take care of all 
that^wfth no perceptible disturbance on the 
surface of its life. It is a beautiful city, with 
handsome edifices and residences, many m- 
dustries, and dominated by a spirit of culture 
and refinement such as few cities possess. 
We wheel out to Dalton, four miles away, a 
beautiful manufacturing village, connected with 
Pittsfield by trolley, the seat of the paper-mills 
which furnish bank-note paper to the United 
States Government, and the home of the 
present Governor of the State, W. Murray 
Crane; and then we wheel to Lenox, skirtmg 
Pittsfield on the east in order that we may 
pass through that section justly noteworthy 
on account of its being for seven years the 
home of the humorist and poet Dr. Holmes. 
We reach Lenox, twelve miles from Dalton, 
in the evening, having covered in the day's 
wheeling about forty miles ; and, as we wheel 
up to the Curtis Hotel, the village band, 
under the electric lights, is giving its regular 
out-of-doors concert, the piazzas of the hotel 
swarming with guests in dinner dress, and the 
streets filled with people and equipages. 

To reach this point of our journey it has 



2i6 Lenox 

been a gradual climb all the way from Williams- 
town ; henceforth there will be nothing but a 
steady descent, even when we cross Monu- 
ment, whose approach on the Stockbridge 
side is an easy rise, but whose southern slope 
towards Great Harrington is a " coast " straight 
down of over a mile. From Lenox to Stock- 
bridge there are many ways to go ; all beauti- 
ful enough, but one surpassingly so, viz., the 
road that leads by Stockbridge Bowl past 
the Hawthorne site, and thence on into the 
village-on-the-plain by the heights where stand 
the residences of Mr. Choate, our Minister to 
England, Dr. Henry M. Field, and others. 
It is worth the while of the wheelman, how- 
ever, before leaving Lenox, to see its beauti- 
ful places, whose superintendents are trained 
English gardeners for the most part. These 
grounds need not be entered to see them, as 
they lie on slopes easily seen from the high- 
way. The villas themselves are conspicuous, 
and may be viewed at a distance. They 
crown the crests and swells In the land ; their 
velvety lawns are on the slopes and terraces ; 
and the great desideratum of a country-seat 
hereabouts being a " view," the house is always 
on a knoll or spur, so that the wheelman can 
take It in as he passes along the highway. 



The Vicinag^e 217 



"•& 



It may not be amiss to say to the wheelman, 
en passant, that in going from town to town 
it is well not to be too slavishly tied to the 
Road-book issued under the authority of some 
State association of bicyclists, whose study 
is often a matter of levels rather than of 
landscapes. In the temple of Berkshire love- 
liness no foot is profane but that of him who 
hurries through her courts. Her symphonies 
fall upon deaf ears, her visions waste their 
prodigal beauty on sightless eyes, unless one 
stops to admire, and stopping, finds his 
admiration turn to aspiration. If bicycling 
is a matter of levels In such a country, then 
Niagara is only so much horse-power, and 
all sentiment valuable only as a marketable 
asset. I have actually seen many bicyclists 
avoid the hilly road with its transporting 
apocalypses. The Road-book says : " From 
Lenox to Stockbridge go through Curtis- 
ville" (now Interlaken). We do not. Leav- 
ing Curtisville on the ri";ht, we wheel into 
Stockbridge over Field hill and then on 
through the charming village under the high 
and white-faced crags of Monument, which 
we ride without a trundle, though perhaps 
a little out of breath when we reach the 
highest point of the pass over the mountain's 



2i8 Lenox 

eastern slope. A sign, " Wheelmen ; Danger- 
ous ! " informs us that other wheelmen have 
been lured to these heights ; indeed, one was 
killed here last summer. 

We decide to leave our wheels in the thick 
forest-growth everywhere about us, save where 
a vista in front reveals the height to which we 
have climbed, and to make the ascent of this 
far-famed mountain immortalized by Bryant. 
A little foot-path marks the way to the sum- 
mit, and soon we are sitting in the " Devil's 
Pulpit," with the entrancing landscape at our 
feet : in the north Greylock, far up the county, 
in the south the Dome, whither we are tend- 
incr ; off to the far west the razored and irrace- 
ful Catskills (graceful in their raggedness) ; 
below us the winding Housatonic and the 
manufacturing village called by the name of 
the river, — the only town in the county 
to preserve the Indian nomenclature, — and 
everywhere the pastoral beauty of field, and 
farm, and meadow, stretching forth to the 
bases of the distant Taghconics. It is a charm- 
ing by-path excursion, and we are all the more 
ready, returning to our wheels, for the "coast" 
down Monument into Great Barrington, four 
miles away. 

Great Barrinofton invites a rest after a crood 



The Vicinas^e 219 



•■fe 



morning's work. The inn where we stop is 
filled with summer boarders and the heights 
around us are crowned with country-seats. It 
is the " season " in Great Barrington, while 
that in Lenox begins in May and ends in 
November, reaching its greatest intensity in 
September. The fame of the lesser of these 
resorts is much enhanced by its having been 
for a few years the home of William Cullen 
Bryant. A truly palatial castle is also here, 
with atrium of African marbles and doors 
from Windsor and walls hung with master- 
pieces of modern art. It is all very beautiful 
from the piazzas of the opposite inn, but re- 
freshed we push on to Sheffield, six miles over 
a perfectly level road of ideal hardness. It is 
swift and constant pedalling unbroken by dis- 
mount or "coast." We have now reached the 
southern end of the county and have been 
havinor on our rieht for some time the near 
view of the Dome, called by the people who 
live in this region " Mount Everett." Sheffield 
enjoys the distinction of being the oldest of 
the Berkshire towns. It has been the birth- 
place of some notable men : Dr. Orville Dewey, 
the distinofuished Unitarian divine of the 
last century, President Barnard of Columbia, 
Mr. George F. Root, the well-known musical 



2 20 Lenox 

composer, and others. The chief attraction 
the Httle village possesses is its long, wide 
street bordered by overarching elms. We 
have left now the region of the summer cot- 
tager for that of the summer boarder, of which 
latter genus there are many lodged here and 
there throughout the entire township. The 
" season " here is very short, yet, by the mod- 
ish attire of the " boarders " going to and from 
the post-office, resting lazily in the hammocks, 
or playing at tennis and croquet on the lawns, 
we are pleasantly impressed with the social 
standing of the village among those who seek 
relief in the summer from the heat of the city. 
It is a pedal of about six miles, at the north- 
ern base of Everett, to the little village of 
South Egremont, and we decide to wheel 
there for supper and the night's lodging. The 
sole attraction here, aside from those beauties 
of landscape with which the whole Berkshire 
region abounds, is the inn. It is filled with 
guests, some being " colonized " out of the 
house. We are now, at South Egremont, only 
four miles from Great Barrington and not 
much farther from the New York line : way 
down in the extreme southwestern corner of 
the State of Massachusetts. Did you ever no- 
tice the jog in the southern end of that divis- 



The Vicinage 221 

ional line between Massachusetts and New 
York? It would take volumes to tell the 
story of the running of that dividing line, 
which was finally determined by a Federal 
commission. Its course was a slant from south- 
west to northeast at a pretty nearly uniform 
distance of twenty miles from the Hudson 
River. At any rate here we are at the south- 
ern point of that line, the "old corner" or jog 
as it looks on the map. On the morrow we 
make the ascent of Mount Everett, and survey 
the country over which we have come, — 
rightly compared to Switzerland. Far in the 
distance rises Greylock in the form of a 
colossal saddle. Monument, Rattlesnake, 
Tom Ball, Perry's Peak, Bald Head, and 
the Lenox heights are in between. It has 
taken four days to see the Berkshires by our 
leisurely itinerary, and when we part on the 
summit of Everett, two of our party descend 
into Connecticut by way of the Salisburys, 
two take the New York side, descending by 
way of Bash-Bish Falls, — a beautiful cascade 
over the precipitous cliffs of Everett, falling 
for more than a hundred feet, — while I retrace 
my way to Lenox. 

Berkshire then is the cycler's paradise. Its 
hills, if a little difficult to climb, are fine to 



222 Lenox 

coast ; its roads are always in prime order ; its 
views fascinate ; its air exhilarates ; its history 
stimulates ; and its ideal hostelries are no 
small part of the charm of the region. A flat 
country makes constant pedalling, and the 
horizon hems one in so that the eye is given 
nothing to do. In Berkshire, the landscapes 
and the " coasts " repay all the climbing, and if 
one will not slavishly follow the itinerary of 
the Road-book, he will fasten upon his mind an 
ineffaceable picture of loveliness. 

PITTSFIELD, THE HEART OF BERKSHIRE 

Industrially and socially Pittsfield is the 
heart of the Berkshire region. Though on 
high ground itself the city lies in a slight 
depression among the hills, the grade out of 
it on the east being nearly two per cent., 
along the railway, and on the south by the 
carriage road leading to Lenox, six miles 
distant, not far from one per cent. It was 
doubtless this fact, among others, which in- 
fluenced the location of the Boston & Albany 
Railroad, which describes an ox-bow as it 
crosses Berkshire. Pittsfield in 1800 was 
but little larger than Sandisfield, at the 
far southeastern limit of the county ; it pro- 



The Vicinage 223 

gressed proportionately and normally during 
the first half of its present existence, but with 
the acquisition of the railroads in 1840, and the 
courts in 1869, it has shot way ahead of 
all the other towns of the county but one, 
changing to a city charter in 1889, and having 
now a population of nearly twenty-five thou- 
sand and a valuation of $16,000,000. It is 
to-day the very heart of Berkshire mercantile 
life, though this by no means implies that 
there are not in other parts of the county 
great and profitable industries ; Indeed, North 
Adams, Adams, Dalton, and Housatonic are 
factory towns (the first-named a prosperous 
city itself and larger than Pittsfield, with large 
outputs). Still, Pittsfield with its electrical, 
woollen, and other industries, its stores, its 
dignity as the county seat, and its location 
on the great highways of railroad traffic is 
facile princcps among smart Berkshire towns 
and one of the most attractive cities In the 
whole of New England. Two beautiful lakes, 
a fascinating environment of hills with Grey- 
lock liftinof its saddle-back aorainst the northern 
sky, a mountain atmosphere, impart to this 
city all the necessary essentials for a " resort " ; 
and Pittsfield does annually entertain hosts 
of summer visitors. Its air is as bracing as 



224 Lenox 

any of the Berkshire towns ; it is easy to get 
to and get away from ; it has the most en- 
chanting prospects and drives, less beautiful 
than those of its southern neighbors, still 
delightful in the prodigality of rich landscapes ; 
its facilities in the way of stores, shops, library, 
churches, and society are all that could be de- 
sired ; its hotels, like all the other inns of Berk- 
shire, make ample provision for the comfort of 
summer guests ; and last, but by no means 
least, its unique and homelike " House of 
Mercy," with the best of medical attendance 
and an efificient school of trained nurses, 
appeals to tourists who make provision for 
the exigencies of illness. 

But the purpose of this short bit about 
Pittsfield, as we might say of the whole of this 
book, is to make part of the Berkshire region 
intelligible and enjoyable to those who are not 
familiar with its story. It is not to write 
history only so far as it explains the Berkshire 
picture, and this chief city of the Berkshires 
could not be understood without a glance 
into its past. 

It becomes interesting to us at once when 
we know that Oliver Wendell Holmes said : 
" the whole of the city of Pittsfield, consisting 
of a section of land six miles square, was, 




'■^ 



The Vicinage 225 

with the exception of a thousand acres, the 
property of my great-grandfather, Jacob 
Wendell." This ancestor of the humorist 
bought the land of the Province and the first 
settlements were begun in the years 1749- 
52, when (1753) the little frontier hamlet 
was known as the township, or plantation, 
of Pontoosuck. It was incorporated with its 
present name, Pittsfield, April 21, 1761. It 
was the fifth town to be incorporated in the 
county, the others having been in the far 
south, and there were yet to be twelve before 
the break with the mother-country. The names 
of all but two of these ante-Revolutionary 
towns in the Berkshires are English ; after- 
wards the town nomenclature is conspicuously 
patriotic, — "Hancock," "Adams," "Washing- 
ton," " Lee," " Dalton," " Otis," and so on. 
Pittsfield is one of the towns named before 
the Revolution ; hence the name after the Earl 
of Chatham, at that time Eno-land's leadinor 
statesman, 

I have already Indicated briefly in other 
places the Indian occupancy of this region 
before and during the progress of the early 
settlements, and I have hinted at some of the 
leading causes which conspired to augment 
the material prosperity of Pittsfield. The 



226 Lenox 

history of the town is the history of the 
Church until ConcrrecrationaHsm was disestab- 
hshed in 1834, and so when we think of the 
early period in all the New England towns, 
it is the Church which looms up big. More- 
over, as the meaning of the word " parson " 
is simply our word " person," or the man who 
in \\\'=> person represents the Church, so it may 
be said as the town was the Church, so the 
Church was the parson, — and in this case 
" Parson Allen," better known as " Fighting 
Parson Allen " of Bennington fame, a graduate 
of Harvard, 1762, and pastor of the F'irst 
Church, Pittsfield, i 764-1810, his only pastor- 
ate. Two of Mr. Allen's successors in this 
parish are as well known. Dr. Heman 
Humphrey (1817-23), called from here to the 
presidency of Amherst College, and Dr. John 
Todd (1842-72), whose Index Rermn and 
Sindenfs AT anna I used to be an indispensable 
part of every scholar's outfit ; but the lustre 
of romantic and intense patriotism, as well as 
the ardor of a perfervid Democratic partisan- 
ship in the midst of Federal New England, 
have made " Parson Allen " one of the most 
interesting figures in all American history. 
He has been rightly styled a " revolutionary 
and democratic zealot." He went with the 



The Vicinage 227 

Berkshire troops to Bennington as chaplain, 
but he leveHed his musket at the foe with 
a keen rehsh in addition to his reijular minis- 
terial duties. After the nation was constitu- 
tionally organized Jefferson was his political 
idol, whom all the rest of the New England 
clergy, with few exceptions, execrated. The 
First Church bell-rope broke with the violent 
and exultant ringing at Jefferson's election in 
i8or. Dr. Belknap, writing of his trip July 4, 
1794, from Pittsfield to Northampton, says : 

" Independence Day. From Pittsfield to Northamp- 
ton ; from Democracy to Federalism! When we left 
Pittsfield great preparations were making to observe 
the day. The inhabitants of this and neighboring towns 
were to meet to-day at Richmond. When we came to 
Northampton we found that not a bell had been rung ; 
nor a gun fired, nor a bowl of punch drank in that very 
Federal town to celebrate the day." — Massachusetts 
Historical Society Collections. 

It is interesting to read that although Parson 
Allen's intense make-up was behind all this 
riotous political enthusiasm, yet his sermons 
in shorthand were read with " but little 
action." 

Pittsfield had by 1 794 developed into a 
place of such importance as to necessitate 
the location here of a post-office, the first in 



228 Lenox 

the county having been located at Stockbridge 
in 1792 ; and the third, fourth, and fifth were 
located respectively at Great Barrington (1797), 
Williamstown (1798), and Lenox, (1800). 
Previous to 1 792, Springfield was the one 
post-ofiice for the whole of Western Massa- 
chusetts. In other chapters I have described 
how Pittsfield with its newspapers (continuous 
files of some of which may be seen in the 
Athenaeum) and with post-riders and stages 
fell naturally into its position of purveyor 
of news for the whole Berkshire region. It 
was always a trade centre ; and later became 
an educational centre, having at one time the 
Berkshire Medical Institution, established in 
1822, and the Maplewood Young Ladies' 
Institute, started in 1841, both of which in- 
stitutions were vigorous, efficient schools for 
a long time, but are now defunct, yet always 
full of pleasant and inspiring memories to 
their graduates. Pittsfield also inaugurated 
a new era in the interests of agriculture by 
the formation in 1807 of the Berkshire Agri- 
cultural Society, making the annual exhibition 
a sort of gala-holiday and so setting a type 
for all similar societies for all time to come. 

If we add to all these claims to eminence 
the great men who have been identified with 



The Vicinao-e 229 



the town in one way or another our Interest 
in the Berkshire city is enhanced. It is no 
small honor that it has been the home of 
Allen, Humphrey, Samuel Harris, and Todd. 
Pittsfield early attracted to it Elkanah Watson, 
the accomplished and versatile gentleman, 
publicist, friend of Washington, and promoter 
of agricultural enterprise. The Berkshire 
capital also vies with its neighbor, Dalton, 
in eivinor a Governor to the commonwealth. 
Governor George N. Briggs, seven times 
chosen Governor of Massachusetts (1843- 
50). It gave a distinguished Senator to 
the United States Senate, Henry L. Dawes, 
nomen clarissime, and he and his brilliant 
daughter, herself a woman of letters, are 
residents in this charming city in the high- 
lands of Western Massachusetts. It was the 
home for seven summers (1849-56) of Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, who loved the ancestral 
estate in the Berkshires and here three 
of his children were born. The street on 
which he lived is known as " Holmes Road " 
and is full of memories of the poet-humorist. 
Pittsfield was also the home of Herman 
Melville, whose sea-stories were in their day 
very popular and still find admiring readers. 
It is the home to-day of a distinguished 



230 Lenox 

writer of present-day fiction, William Stearns 
Davis, author of A Friend of Co'sar, and God 
Wills It. If we scan the annals of patriotic 
devotion we see beside many others the names 
of the gallant General \V. F. Bartlett, Colonel 
of the 49th Massachusetts in the Civil War, 
General Henry S. Briggs, and Colonel Henry 
H. Richardson, the latter still living. Indeed, 
where shall we stop in the enumeration of the 
great men whose names are inseparably linked 
with the county seat of Berkshire ! 

Pittsfield has an air of refinement and 
culture befitting its pre-eminence. The spirit 
of the motto noblesse oblige is always in the 
ascendant. Its public buildings and private 
residences are becoming more and more stately 
and handsome year by year. It has a beauti- 
ful housing for its library and art gallery, 
the "Athenaeum," built in 1875 ^^ ^^^'^ granite. 
It has a round dozen of strong, efficient 
churches. It is soon to have a new art mu- 
seum, the munificent crift of Mr. Zenas Crane 
of Dalton. Trolleys lead from the city in all 
directions. The main streets of the city cross 
each other at right angles, and are known by 
the rather unattractive names of the points 
of the compass. Pontoosuc Lake, the old 
Indian " Skoon-keek-moon-keek," is an out- 



The Vicinage 231 

ing place in the summer months, with two 
steamers, pavihons, and cottages. Excursions 
to Greylock are frequent by carriage drive. 
Dalton with the very interesting Wahconah 
Falls is five miles to the east, Lenox only 
six miles to the south, and Lebanon Springs 
past the placid Onota only nine miles to the 
west. One of the old " institutions " of Pitts- 
field, a beautiful custom, still survives : a 
sunrise prayer-meeting on New Year's Day, 
when all the citizens come together to render 
thanks for the blessings of the past year and 
to supplicate mercies for the year to come, 
a custom which has survived since the pastor- 
ate of Heman Humphrey. 

HISTORIC STOCKBRIDGE 

Have you heard that old saw that down in 
Stockbridge all the crickets chirp " Sedgwick ! 
Sedgwick ! " ? Donald G. Mitchell gives it a 
classic setting in his American Lands and 
Letters. It has now passed into folk-lore. 
Stockbridge, the home, during the latter part 
of the eighteenth century, of the Hon. Theo- 
dore Sedgwick, one of the most distinguished 
of our Massachusetts statesmen at the time of 
the birth of the republic, was the birthplace of 
his brilliant daughter, Catherine Maria, who 



232 Lenox 

reflected upon her native town, as well as upon 
Lenox, the place of her adopted residence, 
the dazzling glory of her name in literature as 
a pioneer in American letters. In fact, the 
township has never been since those early days 
without a representative of the Sedgwick fam- 
ily ; and the adage about the crickets is only 
another way of expressing the delicate hom- 
age this charming village pays to a name 
which gathers into itself the dignity, culture, 
and worth of this old and far-famed town. 

There is an air of classic stateliness and 
repose about Stockbridge. Its wide, elm-bor- 
dered street, adorned at intervals with appro- 
priate memorials in stone, and lined with 
beautiful residences, is a perpetuation of the 
old New England idea of laying out towns, 
and vies with the celebrated street in Old 
Hadley-on-the-Plain. To the north of the 
village rise rather abruptly the heights which 
are crowned by magnificent villas, and which, 
overlooking the town and the winding Housa- 
tonic, which flows through the heart of it, 
catch the reflection of the sun first on the 
chalky cliffs of Monument, which rises 1640 
feet in the southern extremity of the town- 
ship. It is, indeed, an ever-to-be-remembered 
view, the very same as that which Bryant, who 



The Vicinage 



-^o 



spent his early years in this region, has sketched 
in his poem on Mouument Aloiintain : 

" * ■ ■ the scene 
Is lovely round; a beautiful river there 
Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads, 

" ' ' ■ On each side 
The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond, 
Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise 
The mountain-columns with which earth props up 
heaven." 

Stockbridge is, in a way, mortised into 
Lenox, the heights we have described reced- 
ing back and up into the more commanding 
eminences of the last-named town, to which it 
is contiguous, so that a very considerable part 
of the summer residents who have made for 
themselves country-seats in this region actually 
pay taxes in Stockbridge, but in everything 
else are identified with Lenox. The northern 
end of the Stockbridge township is less than a 
third of a mile from the Lenox post-office ; in- 
deed, the first-named town pays to the latter 
nearly two hundred dollars per annum for the 
education of children living near Lenox vil- 
lage. Topographically, Stockbridge is a rect- 
angle on a series of terraces, with the tilted 
end, where the villas are, in the Lenox heights, 



234 Lenox 

and the low end, where the village is, at the 
base of Monument. It is an old town, one 
of the verv oldest in Berkshire, and was In- 
corporated in 1739, though the Congrega- 
tional church of the village was organized two 
years earlier, 1737, when the Mohican Indians, 
the aborigines of the county, were here col- 
lected and educated by John Sergeant. The 
records of Stockbridge are thus almost syn- 
chronous with the beginnings of the county 
itself. 

The history of Stockbridge is little more 
than that of an Indian town until the out- 
break of the Revolution. The Indians were 
docile and friendly, were ministered to succes- 
sively by John Sergeant, Jonathan Edwards, 
and Gideon Hawley, and were removed in a 
body to a reservation in New York in 1785- 
87. An appropriate monument — a simple 
monolith of field-stone — has been erected in 
the village of Stockbridge to the memory of 
these red men ; not far away is the shaft in 
memory of Edwards, who was called from his 
pastorate here in 1758 to the presidency of 
Princeton College ; while a little farther down 
the wide villaofe street was standimT until two 
years ago the house in which he wrote the 
Freedom of the Will. It is a pity that this 



The Vicinao^e 235 



ancient building was not preserved : a price- 
less possession, which might have been re- 
moved to another part of the village when its 
site was wanted for a modern residence. On 
the eminence north of the town stands the 
Missionary Building, where the savages were 
instructed, their education being to a certain 
extent industrial, even in that day of religious 
scholasticism and catechisms ; and in the vil- 
lage, near the Congregational church, stands 
the Field Memorial Tower, with chimes, per- 
petuating the name of one of the best-known 
Stockbridge pastors, the Rev, David Dudley 
Field, D.D., and marking the place where the 
first church edifice stood. 

But the story of the " Stockbridge Indians," 
as they are now called in the asylum they 
have found in the far West, and who never 
numbered more than four hundred at any 
period of their sojourn in the Berkshire vil- 
lage, is only one element of interest in this 
historic town. What vivid pictures from the 
olden days throng one's steps in the quiet vil- 
lage street as he looks out upon the stylish 
equipages, the golfers on their way to and 
froni the links, the groups of " rcsorters " on 
the piazza of the " Red Lion," the occasional 
ban vivant in white flannel negligee! Here the 



236 Lenox 

Indians were taught, and Sergeant wrought 
his labor of love, finished all too early by his 
untimely death. Here Edwards " shaped his 
creed at the forcre of thought," while over 
Monument at frequent intervals came from 
the adjoining town his friend, Samuel Hop- 
kins, who moulded into credal forms (so long 
the galling chains of the free religious spirit) 
the theology of New England. Here suc- 
ceeded to the mighty Edwards the faithful 
Dr. West, who enjoyed a pastorate of fifty- 
eight years, longest on record in the county. 
Miss Sedgwick has drawn him to the life in 
many of her stories, just as Mrs. Stowe has 
Dr. Hopkins in her Minister s Wooi^ig. One 
finds much to love in the amiable " little Dr. 
West," "an Apollo in little," as Catherine 
Sedgwick describes Parson Wilson in The 
Linivoods from the origfinal of her o^irlhood's 
pastor, " being not more than five feet four in 
height, and perfectly well made, with well- 
turned leg without the aid of garters, three- 
cornered hat, gold-headed cane, and buckskin 
gloves," and whose first act, on the occasion 
of a pastoral call, was to " smooth his hair to 
an equatorial line around his forehead " and 
then to help himself to the decanter. 

Here in Stockbridge the Revolutionary spirit 







^ 



o 



The Vicinaee 237 



"■&' 



rose to the highest pitch of indignation and 
enthusiasm, sending its choicest sons to Bunker 
Hill, and boycotting goods of English manu- 
facture. Here in the War of 181 2 some 
French prisoners of war were quartered during 
a memorable winter, much to Catherine Sedgf- 
wick's delight, then a young woman in her 
early twenties. Here in 18 19 came the Rev. 
David Dudley Field, D. D., as pastor of the 
village church, the father of one of the most 
distinguished families in American history, and 
here he ministered until 1837. Here Mrs. 
Jameson and Miss Martineau visited Miss 
Sedgwick ; and through these village streets 
have passed at one time or another those who 
have had the most honored names in the 
world's statesmanship and literature. And 
what shall we say of the natives themselves ? 
What would any town be without its local 
heroisms and sacrifices and its sturdy yeo- 
manry ? It is no wonder the pride of residence 
is developed in one who lives in Stockbridge 
perhaps more than in one who lives in any 
other town. Its history, its scenery, its dig- 
nity, its quiet give it a unique charm. It vies 
with Lenox in attracting wealth to its sightly 
hillsides. 

Stockbridge includes within the limits of 



23S Lenox 

the township the outlying hamlets Glen Dale 
and Curtisville. At Glen Dale there is a fine 
water-power from the Housatonic, and until 
within recent years this little village was the 
seat of woollen and paper industries. It is 
through the burning of its two mills paralyzed 
industrially, but here the great American sculp- 
tor French has made himself a " summer-place " 
with studio, and it was here his heroic figure 
of " Washington," lately presented to France, 
was wrought out. At Curtisville is located 
St. Helen's Home for the Fresh-air children, 
an institution of the most beneficent character, 
provided through the liberality of John E. 
Parsons, Esq., of New York, and his practical 
philanthropy not only has blessed many squalid 
tenements and joyless households, but has 
yielded him, in the happy faces and merry 
hearts of the children, the best return upon 
his investment. 

THE STOCKBRIDGE INDIANS 

A solitary monolith of rough field-stone 
stands at the western end of Stockbridge, 
overlooking the river flats and the different 
eolf links which cross and recross the windinof 
stream, and bears this inscription : " The an- 
cient burial-place of the Stockbridge Indians. 



The Vicinage 239 

The Friends of our Fathers." At the other 
end of the village, on a rising piece of ground, 
converted fifty years ago into a pleasure park 
throuofh the munificence of the heirs to the 
Sedgwick estate, of which it was a part, is 
"Laurel Hill," once the Indians' place of 
meeting and council. Between these termini, 
nearly a mile apart, stretches the beautiful 
village street, broad, perfectly level, and bor- 
dered by ancient elms ; a street which breathes 
its historic associations, its classic dignity, its 
repose into the beholder, causing it to stand 
out as distinctly in his mind as any of the 
famous streets of the world. Along it are 
other memorials of the Indian period : the 
monument to Jonathan Edwards, pastor here 
among the aborigines 1751-58; the "Field 
Memorial Chimes," which mark the spot where 
the first meeting-house stood, where some red- 
skinned brave " wound the horn," so to speak, 
by announcing through a huge conch shell, as 
through a megaphone, the stated hours of ser- 
vice ; and not far away, on the same street, 
was, until within two years, the house which 
Jonathan Edwards occupied, and where he 
wrote his famous treatise on the Will. 
Another sacred relic, still surviving, is the 
"Mission House," standing on the heights to 



240 Lenox 

the north of the village. It is a sacred period, 
that of the Indian occupancy from 1736 un- 
til 1785-87, during which all the Indians of 
Berkshire were collected here in this broad 
plain, surrounded by dense wilderness, through 
which a trail led by Maus-wa-see-khi and Skate- 
kook winding in and over the mountain passes 
of the Hoosacs to Westfield, and another in 
the direction of the settinor sun throuoh the 
forest to Kinderhook. As in a palimpsest, we 
read distinctly beneath the surface of modern 
Stockbridge the record of that missionary pre- 
decessor, the village of Wnogh-que-too-koke, 
with its wigwams, its savages, its belts of 
wampum, and its pipes of peace. 

Ea7'ly Indian Settlers 
It is not known exactly when the Muh-he- 
kan-e-ok (or Mohicans) came into this valley of 
the Hoo-es-ten-nuc (Housatonic). They were 
here in the seventeenth century, and there is a 
record of a fisfht with Indians on the banks of 
the Housatonic in " King Philip's War " in the 
year 1676, but these hostile Indians were cov- 
ering their retreat from Westfield to the 
Mahecannituck (Hudson), and were not the 
peaceful aborigines of this valley. This is be- 
lieved to be the first historic mention of this 



The Vicinage 241 

region, and the name of the river, cahed by 
some of the early chroniclers " Ausotunnoog," 
and by others " Ousetonuck," would seem to 
indicate that the Indians who gave it this 
name must have been here before this date. 
Whatever may have been the date of the com- 
ing hither of the Mohicans, it is certain that 
the earliest settlers did nothing, nay, even 
they did worse than nothing, for the regenera- 
tion of the debased savages in whose midst 
they were preparing to make homes. The 
Dutch trader with his "fire-water" and the 
first settlers with their greed were not adapted 
to impress upon the savage mind the immense 
superiority of Christianity from an ethical 
standpoint. And besides as the theology of 
that day was fatalistic to the non-elect, in 
which class were doubtless numbered many of 
their savage neighbors, it would be worse than 
useless to offer the Gospel ; nay, even, would 
be an affront to the Deity, whose decrees were 
fixed ! Moreover, there is no reason for sup- 
posing that frontier settlements then were un- 
like what they are now ; and, indeed, we have 
positive evidence from Dr. Hopkins, pastor at 
Great Harrington, 1744-69, that "vice and 
licentiousness were everywhere prevalent." 
The days of " the fathers " would not seem so 



242 Lenox 

gilded with the histre of other-worldHness, if 
we could get back there. The Indian was not 
deceived by a nasal piety, and yet we read 
that Konkapot, the chief of the Muh-he-kan- 
e-ok, wanted to have the Christian religion 
taught to him and his people. Settlements 
had begun in 1722, but it was not until 1734 
that anything was done to promote the well- 
being of the aborigines. It was then that the 
Indian mission was started, prosecuted for the 
first two years in the north parish of Sheffield, 
and transferred in 1736 to Stockbridge, which 
remained the missionary town as long as the 
Indians stayed in Berkshire. 

TJic Indian Mission 

And so Berkshire, which was to become 
celebrated in history as the birthplace of the 
great foreign missionary movement in Amer- 
ica, is also known through this early experi- 
ment in home missions, with which the names 
of Sergeant and Edwards are so prominently 
identified, to whose memory tablets have been 
placed on the walls of the village church. The 
saintly Sergeant gave it fifteen years of his 
life, coming here from his tutorship in Yale, 
then in the first twenty-five years of its splen- 
did career, and was succeeded by Edwards, 



The Vicinaoj'e 243 



'<-> 



who had graduated from Yale in 1720, nine 
years before Sergeant, but who came to Berk- 
shire from his long and troubled pastorate in 
Northampton, Sergeant died in 1749, but he 
had established the mission on a sound and 
firm basis, industrial education playing no 
small part in his sensible scheme. His was 
the pioneer work — organization, building, 
translation, preaching, and a sort of general 
oversight of the Indians and their needs in the 
surrounding country. David Brainerd came 
hither to Sercreant for instruction in the In- 
dian tongue, and made frequent visits to 
Stockbridge before taking up his work among 
the Delawares. Jonathan Edwards, Jr., who 
was a boy of six when his father came to 
Stockbridge, says the only English he heard 
spoken during his boyhood was in his father's 
house. There were a few white families in 
the township, but the younger Edwards says 
his playmates were all Indian boys, and con- 
sequently he himself came to have great fa- 
cility in the Indian language, becoming later 
an authority on the Mohican dialect. Stock- 
bridge was, indeed, a centre of instruction for 
other tribes than the Muh-he-kan-e-ok, some 
of the Mohawks coming here for instruction 
from the region about Schenectady. The 



244 Lenox 

town was an inviting place for all those 
schemers who make up Indian "rings" and 
grow rich off the Indian's necessities, and more 
than once the righteous Edwards burned with 
holy anger against their iniquitous doings. 
An Indian party and an anti-Indian party at 
length began to appear in the town, during 
the long pastorate of Dr. West, who succeeded 
Edwards in 1758 and remained pastor until 
1 816, when he died. But long before his 
death the Indians had taken their departure 
for Oneida, New York, and thus ended the 
period of the Indian occupancy. Dr. David 
Dudley Field says " the average number of 
Indians was four hundred as long as they re- 
mained in the town," but a writer in the Col- 
lections of the Massachusetts Historical Society 
says that the number of Indians in the town 
was continually " wasting away." One author- 
ity says that in i 736, when the mission moved 
to Stockbridge, the number "was ninety per- 
sons; in 1752, 150 families; in 1764, 221 
persons ; and in i 786, when they migrated, one- 
third that number"; and another still that 
"in 1736 the number was 90 individuals; in 
1740, 120; in 1749, 218; and in 1786, 400." 

There are many points of interest in con- 
nection with the " missionary " period in the 



The Vicinage 245 

history of Stockbridge, It is noticeable that 
industrial education, which is so prominent a 
feature in modern methods, was then a main 
part of the work. Possibly that idea may 
have been born on Berkshire soil, too. It 
would also be worthy of note if the report of 
a commission sent out to Oneida, N. Y,, in 
1796, to inquire into the condition of the 
Stockbridge Indians, could be summarized 
here, showingf in its conclusions how faithful 
and efficient had been the labors in the Berk- 
shire village during the Indians' stay there. 
It is also pertinent to state here that the sub- 
sequent history of the Stockbridge Indians, 
who removed to Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 
1829, later to Lake Winnebago, then to Min- 
nesota, and lastly to a reservation, I believe, 
in the Indian Territory, has fulfilled the hopes 
and promises of their early education ; their 
general character is industrious, temperate, 
honest, intelligent, and peaceful. It would be 
interesting to study some of the prominent 
members of the tribe. Chief Konkapot for 
example, and Umpachene and Occum, re- 
membering that a race can only fairly be 
judged by the finest specimens. Certain it is 
that the seeds of that work by Sergeant, and 
Edwards, and Woodbridge, and West, and 



246 Lenox 

later by the son of the saintly and sainted John 
Sergeant, possessed the germs of immortality. 

Jonathan Edwards s Memory 

But doubtless the point of keenest interest 
to the general public in connection with the 
missionary labors on behalf of the Mohican 
Indians in Berkshire is the part taken in that 
work by Jonathan Edwards, When he was 
called from here in i 758 to the presidency of 
Princeton he almost declined, and his letter 
askinor for time to consider the " call " and 
lay it before a council tells how much he will 
sacrifice in a literary way by leaving Stock- 
bridge, the many books he had it in his mind to 
write for which there was leisure in his Berk- 
shire parish. He burst into tears when the 
council decided that he ought to accept the 
"higher call" and reluctantly left Stockbridge 
in January, 1758, being inaugurated at Prince- 
ton the next month, and dying the month 
succeeding of inoculation to prevent small- 
pox, or vaccination. Those seven years in 
the heart of the Berkshire wilderness were 
practically his last on earth, and one almost 
wishes the mighty brain might have been 
spared to work out, in the Berkshire surround- 



The Vicinap-e 247 



incrs he loved, the seed-thoughts and the teem- 
nig concepts with which it was filled. His 
Stockbridcre life was not without its romance 
as well as its work and its friction. Here in 
1752 President Burr of Princeton College 
came for the hand of his daughter, Esther, 
and was married, a child of their union being 
no less a person than the distinguished Aaron 
Burr, once Vice-President of the United States 
and the slayer of Hamilton. Here in Stock- 
bridge Edwards bought the house formerly 
built and occupied by Sergeant, the house 
which came down two years ago. I think 
of no more fruitful scene for the painter's 
brush than that of the philosopher among 
the savages, a picture, indeed, of what for- 
ei":n missions will become when to the be- 
nighted heathen o-q the bris^htest intellects, 
ready to cope with the sophistries of a 
strange religion and seeking to evolve there- 
from all that is true and immortal. Jona- 
than Edwards, a missionary, suggests infinite 
possibilities. 

A word about the house where he lived and 
its razing. Jericho's walls were not flatter than 
it is to-day, but the enterprising pastor of the 
village church, to which his sometime prede- 
cessor Edwards ministered a hundred and fifty 



248 Lenox 

years ago, having failed to persuade his flock 
to raise the necessary thousand dollars to pre- 
serve the historic edifice where the Freedom 
of the Will was written, has hit upon the 
novel scheme of making up its fallen timbers 
into various objects of vertu and bric-a-brac, 
brackets, candlesticks, etc. One such souvenir 
in the shape of a substantial chair made from 
its oaken beams was the gift of the originator 
of this interesting conceit to the author of this 
book. As oft as I sit in it I conoratulate the 
world that it has escaped from the tyranny of 
Edwards's theology. Take this passage from 
his " Sinners in the hands of an angry God," 
preached in 1741 : " The God that holds you 
over the pit of hell much as one holds a spider 
or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors 
you and is dreadfully provoked ; you are ten 
thousand times so abominable in his eyes as 
the most hateful and venomous serpent is in 
ours." And then follows a pitiless description 
of millions of ages in hell, which when they 
have been passed will be only a "point to 
what remains." 

Nevertheless, I sit in the quaint chair humbly 
when I think that it once formed part of the 
rafters that sheltered " the mightiest intellect 
America has produced." 



The Vicinage 249 

GREAT BARRINGTON OF OLD AND OF TO-DAY 

One of the beautiful villages in the Berk- 
shires is Great Barrington, lying in the southern 
part of the county, with Monument Mountain 
(Maus-wa-see-khi) rising in the northern part 
of the township and the Dome (Taghconic) 
ten miles away in the opposite direction. The 
village is built on an old Indian site, by the 
side of the Housatonic River, whose waters 
to-day turn the wheels of many prosperous in- 
dustries within the precincts of the town. It 
was here in this part of the county, in the 
township of Sheffield, which originally included 
that of Great Barrington, that the settlement 
of Berkshire commenced, and until Lenox be- 
came the shire-town in 1787, Great Barrington 
was the county seat. The present Congrega- 
tional church stands on, or near, the site of 
the " Great Wigwam," one of the settlements 
of the Mohican Indians when the white man 
first crossed the Hoosac range to take up his 
home in the Housatonic Valley, about the 
year 1725. Indeed, the Indian mission, under 
the auspices of a Scotch " Society for the Propa- 
gation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," was 
here undertaken by John Sergeant in 1734, 
and prosecuted by him for two years, when 
the mission was removed to Stockbridge, where 



250 Lenox 

it remained and prospered until the close of 
the American Revolution. Sheffield, includ- 
ing what was then its "north parish" (now 
Great Barrington), was incorporated in 1733, 
but in 1761 this northern part of the old town- 
ship of Sheffield had grown large and strong 
enough to seek and obtain incorporation un- 
der the name it now bears, after one Viscount 
Barrington, and it was called Great Barring- 
ton to distinguish it from another town of the 
same name on the line between Massachusetts 
and Rhode Island, at that time a disputed 
boundary. 

The town of Great Barrington, which, with 
its outlying and extensive manufacturing dis- 
trict known as the village of Housatonic, has 
a population of nearly six thousand, has suf- 
fered less, beinor on the river and on the rail- 
road, from the vicissitudes of fortune than 
many another Berkshire town. It is the busi- 
ness centre of the immediate vicinity ; both 
sides of its main street being crowded on any 
afternoon, but particularly on Saturday, with 
wagons and teams from the surrounding coun- 
try hitched to posts close together on the 
edge of the sidewalk. Yet despite this sur- 
vival of distinctive rural customs, perhaps be- 
cause of it, the town is well patronized ; it is, 



The Vicinage 251 

also, well patronized by summer visitors when 
the annual exodus from the heated cities oc- 
curs. Many estates have already been created 
within the confines of the town, and the coun- 
try houses built here by many who are well 
known in the large cities are beautiful speci- 
mens of rural architecture. 

Great Barrino-ton is charmino; In its drives, 
which lead north over Monument to Stock- 
bridge, eight miles away, and back by the tor- 
tuous Housatonic through the villages of Glen 
Dale and Housatonic ; west through South 
Egremont, a charming hamlet always well filled 
with summer guests, to Bash-Bish Falls, a cat- 
aract whose small stream of water falls a hun- 
dred feet down the cliff on one side of the 
Dome, and south, six miles, to Sheffield, an- 
other town which has its quota of visitors and 
Is rich in Interesting associations. Eastward 
from Great Barrinofton the road is a constant 
ascent to New Marlborough, where summer 
guests abound and where some of the finest 
views in Berkshire are to be obtained. Midway 
between Great Barrlngton and New Marlbor- 
ough, on this last-named road, Is the beautiful 
Lake Buell, on either side of which a drive 
passes close to the margin of the lake, making 
it accessible for camping and pleasure parties. 



252 Lenox 

Great Barrington enjoys eminence among 
the towns of the country as having one of the 
finest parsonages in the world, the " Hopkins 
Memorial Manse," built by the late Mrs. Hop- 
kins of California in honor of her husband's 
ancestral relative, the Rev. Samuel Hopkins, 
D.D., pastor in Great Barrington 1744-69. 
It was built in 1887, and is of solid granite, 
having cloisters which connect it with the 
church. The cost was nearly a hundred thou- 
sand dollars, and, as can be easily imagined, 
the expense of maintenance made an increase 
in the village pastor's salary imperative. To 
this munificent gift to the Congregational 
church Mrs. Hopkins superadded the present 
of a magnificent Roosevelt organ, having nearly 
one hundred stops and five thousand pipes, 
with electric echo-organ attachment and water- 
motor power ; one of the great organs of the 
country. It is, perhaps, necessary to say, in or- 
der to complete the story of Great Barrington's 
eminence, and Mrs. Hopkins's regal wealth, 
that the house — palace, rather — she built for 
herself after her marriage to Mr. Searles, the 
architect, is one of the most costly and elegant 
of private residences in the United States, if 
not anywhere. It stands almost directly op- 
posite the " Inn," and the high wall which 




?\ 



The Vicinage 253 

borders the Hopkins property shuts the house 
off a Httle from the view of the street. A 
description of its palatial interior ; its atrium 
and massive columns of African marble ; its 
elegant rooms, filled with rare and costly 
works of art ; its music-room, with another 
grand Roosevelt organ ; its furniture, books, 
pictures, Windsor-Castle doors, busts, and me- 
dallions, would make an interesting story by 
itself. 

The fame of this beautiful Berkshire village 
rests upon the securest foundations, since 
within its metes and confines once lived two 
of the greatest men America has produced — 
Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the father of New Eng- 
land theology, an ultra-Calvinistic " system of 
divinity " that relaxes its grip and its gloom 
only under the sledge-hammer of modern criti- 
cism ; and William Cullen Bryant, the poet- 
journalist. On the extensive grounds in the 
rear of the Berkshire Inn still stands the 
house in which Bryant was married, when a 
young lawyer and the town clerk of the village. 

SAMUEL HOPKINS, THE EMINENT THEOLOGIAN 
AND ABOLITIONIST 

The arc that spans the distance of thought 
from Samuel Hopkins to Miss Catherine 



254 Lenox 

Sedofwlck measures i8o de2:rees. Berkshire 
has the honor of having been the residence 
of extreme thinkers of the Hopkins-Edwards 
type, and those of the Sedgwick-Dewey order ; 
and perhaps it may be said with perfect truth- 
fulness that if we had never had Hopkinsian- 
ism we would never have had Unitarianism. 
Who, then, was this man Hopkins, and what 
was his system ? 

In general, it may be said he was one of 
the greatest theologians that New England 
has produced. His system of theology dom- 
inated the creeds of Congregational churches, 
and to a certain extent also the Presbyterian, 
for half a century and more. He became 
after leaving his twenty-five-year pastorate 
in Great Barrington the doughty foe of 
slavery in its then stronghold, Newport, where 
he was pastor thirty-three years, until his 
death in 1803, covering the Revolutionary 
period and the trying times in that exposed 
and beleaguered city. Born in 1721 in Con- 
necticut, and graduating at Yale in 1741, a 
pastor at Great Barrington, Mass., 1 744- 
69, a period exactly synchronous with the 
early development of Berkshire, and dying 
at eighty-two in Rhode Island, his long and 
eminent life was known throughout New 



The Vicinage 255 

England. The intimate friend of Edwards, 
whose pupil he was and whose biographer 
he became, he differed in some particulars 
from his great teacher, and in 1793 gave to 
the world his System of Divinity, a work in 
two volumes whose speculative and dogmatic 
positions were designed to be the most ultra 
reaffirmation of Calvinism against a growing 
Arminianism. Mrs. Stowe has made this man, 
Samuel Hopkins, the hero of The Minister s 
Wooing, and her picture of him shows that 
a man may be better than his creed. Whit- 
tier in his essay on Hopkins says : 

" There are few instances on record of moral heroism 
superior to that of Samuel Hopkins in rebuking slavery 
in the time and place of its power. It may well be 
doubted whether on that Sabbath-day the angels of 
God in their wide survey of his universe looked upon 
a nobler spectacle than that of the minister of Newport 
rising up before his slave-holding congregation and 
demanding in the name of the Highest the ' deliverance 
of the captive and the opening of the prison doors 
to them that were bound.' " 

This was the man, then, who for twenty- 
five years was the pastor at Great Barrington, 
and who is, next to Edwards, the most 
prominent of the Berkshire clergy. He was 
ordained, a boy of scarcely twenty-two, over 



256 Lenox 

the church in North Sheffield (now Great 
Barrington), on the day that the church was 
organized, December 28, 1743, having studied 
theology, between his graduation and settle- 
ment, with Jonathan Edwards at Northamp- 
ton. His salary in this frontier settlement 
of the Berkshires was ^65 per annum, and 
almost twenty years after, June 4, 1762, I find 
this entry in the Great Barrington Town 
Records : 

" Voted that ^80 lawful money shall be the an- 
nual sallery [sir] for the Revd. Samuel Hopkins when 
the necessaries are bo't and sold at the following 
prices [scale named] and As those necessaries of life 
shall fall or rise his sallery shall fall or rise accordingly 
or in proportion." 

Notwithstanding this advance in Mr. Hop- 
kins's salary, it was not paid, and in 1768 he 
brouo^ht suit against the town to recover 
"arrearages for 1761, 1762, 1764, 1765, and 
1 766. The town voting to defend itself 
against the suit, Mr. Hopkins in 1769 re- 
signed, and was dismissed, because the church 
could not support him. It was a godless, 
frontier community," and vice and licentious- 
ness were prevalent. Five years after Mr. 
Hopkins had been settled he had married 
in his parish, and by the wisdom or unwisdom 



The Vicinage 257 

of our forefathers' custom a large family was 
the result, so that Mr. Hopkins was obliged 
to support his household of wife and eight 
children by devoting considerable time to 
agricultural pursuits. 

Meantime, he was a vigorous opponent of 
the loose Half-way Covenant of the time, and 
so dissension got into the parish. One year 
the town cut down his " sallery " to ^45, and 
decreased the amount of firewood, evidently 
trying to freeze him out in more senses than 
one ! His church, which at the first only 
consisted of thirty families, was weakened ; 
" scarcely any one," he complained, "comes to 
my house for instruction " ; "I study but lit- 
tle " (he was rising each day at four a.m. for 
sermon and other literary work), " and devote 
much time to my wordly concerns " ; and on 
May 8, 1751, he records in his diary: "One 
soul converted through me ; this is the first 
evidence I have had of the conversion of any 
one since I have been in this place, and surely 
it is well worth while to preach seven years to 
be in any ways instrumental in the conversion 
of one soul." The bright spot in Hopkins's 
Berkshire residence was the coming to Stock- 
bridge in 1751 of his old friend and instructor, 
Jonathan Edwards, and until 1758, when 



258 Lenox 

Edwards was called to Princeton, their friendly 
intimacies were re-established. Edwards died 
in 1758, and his friend became his biographer, 
a task as colossal as it was painful to him. 
One loves to think of these two mighty men 
riding back and forth across Maus-wa-see-khi 
to discuss their scholastic dicta. A scholastic 
age splits hairs. Every religion and every 
church has its scholastic period. It is small 
wonder that Hopkins had only one convert in 
a heptade of years. Edwards and he forged 
the chains that Channing broke. Hopkinsian- 
ism was formulated as a system in 1793 ; Uni- 
tarianism was distinctly organized and avowed 
in 1819, and Miss Sedgwick's A N civ England 
Tale, in 1822, was not only associated with 
the rise of American fiction, but it was fiction 
with a purpose, and that purpose was the 
merciless exposure of a narrow orthodoxy. 

But Hopkinsianism as a system had some 
peculiar tenets, which may have been infer- 
ences from, but were not an integral part of 
the older Calvinism, such as the divine author- 
ship of evil, the willingness to be damned for 
the glory of God, and the doctrine of disinter- 
ested benevolence. It was the last that at- 
tracted Channing as much as the former 
repelled him. Hopkins was dismissed from 



The Vicinao-e 259 



& 



Great Barrington January 18, 1769, and was 
not settled at Newport until April 11, 1770. 
He was then a man of forty-nine, and in the 
full vigor of his powers, but the immediate 
questions on hand were national for the next 
few years. In the great struggle, and in the 
greater crises during " the critical period of 
American history" (1783-88), Hopkins was 
occupied with the measures and events that 
marked an old order making way for the 
advent of the new republic. Accordingly, it 
is not until i 793 that the System of Divinily 
appears. It was as Whittier says, " a system 
which reduced the doctrines of the Reforma- 
tion to an ingenious and scholastic form, and 
had the merit of brinoringr those doctrines to 
the test of reason and philosophy." It will be 
remembered in the popular mind longest with 
the question which it propounded to all can- 
didates for the Church : " Are you willing to 
be damned for the glory of God ? " a question 
which was seriously asked far on into the 
present century. It was the highest reach of 
the submissive spirit to be able to answer 
that question affirmatively ; then regeneration 
might be expected to take place. It was on a 
par with all the grosser features of the reign- 
ing Puritan theology. 



26o Lenox 

The movements of religious thoucrlit in New 
England are interesting and profoundly in- 
structive to trace ; from the Mathers to Ed- 
wards and Hopkins, with the variations of 
Emmons, Bellamy, Taylor, and Dwight ; the 
mighty cleavage of Channing's protest ; the 
reconstructive system of Bushnell, in whose 
footsteps we are walking to-day. It is a hun- 
dred years since Hopkins's "system" appeared, 
and its reactionary conservatism was destined 
to be only the leading of a " forlorn hope." 
Hopkins was hated and fought in his day, but 
he was triumphant, if that can be called a 
triumph which in crushing an enemy does 
not subdue his spirit. Hopkinsianism spread 
through eastern New England but now noth- 
ingf is left of it but a name. The breath of 
the progressive spirit passes over it, and it is 
gone. 

Of Hopkins as a man enough cannot be 
said. Read Mrs. Stowe's beautiful portrai- 
ture of him in The Minister s Wooing. Af- 
ter his dismissal at Great Barringrton he res^rets 
that he went away, " considering the unhappy 
consequences to that people by my leaving 
them " ; and in 1 794 he revisits his Berkshire 
parish only to find the most pitiable religious 
destitution ; no minister, the meeting-house 



The Vicinage 261 

the resort of bats and sheep, and the Sabbath 
given over to horse-racing, sitting in taverns, 
and not enough interest in rehgion to even fit 
up a place in which to hear their old pastor 
preach. Whittier says that on leaving Great 
Barringrton he " sold a slave whom he had 
himself owned," but assuredly the great heart 
of Hopkins was stirred to deepest hatred of 
the slave-traffic, and even the money which he 
received for his slave he devoted to the sup- 
port and education of a negro. He was the 
proto-abolitionist of America, and he only as- 
sented to the Constitution in 1789, which 
granted the right of existence to slavery for 
twenty years, because he preferred that to 
anarchy. "Still," he said, " I fear." Hopkins 
was a man, said Jonathan Edwards the 
younger, "of immeasurable influence over 
men," yet he was meek, always preferring 
others to himself, seeking the advancement of 
Edwards, when it would have been to his own 
selfish interest to have pushed his own claims 
for the Stockbridge parish on Sergeant's death. 
Mrs. Stowe's story is founded on a true fact 
in the early love-experiences of Dr. Hopkins, 
whose conduct in the afYair was so honorable 
as to have sug-gested to the novelist her 
charming romance. He refused "calls" away 



262 Lenox 

from his Newport parish, and stayed on "one 
fifth of what the Boston ministers were re- 
ceiving," and refused to take up collections for 
his support, but lived on what was given him. 
He was swift to apologize for errors in his own 
conduct, and out of his meagre pittances gave 
generously to all good causes. His novelist- 
biographer, Mrs. Stowe, says " that a little child 
once described his appearance in the pulpit by 
saying, ' I saw God there and I was afraid.' " 
Others saw God in the man, and loved, be- 
cause they saw love and sympathy and be- 
nignity. 

THE OLDEST TOWN IN THE BERKSHIRES 

Where the Housatonic glides past the tow- 
ering " Taghconic Dome," in an area of broad 
meadow lands, there lies the ancient town of 
Sheffield, just three hours from Manhattan. 
The little unpretentious railroad station, 
through which pass the summer tourists, is 
alive only at intervals. Otherwise everything 
is slumbrous. There before you rises the 
lofty " Dome," and behind you stretches the 
sleepy town, whose very wide, elm-bordered, 
and densely shaded street is a dream of quiet, 
restful beauty, with the golden shower of sun- 
beams fallinor through the leaves of the trees 



The Vicinage 263 

upon the road below. Sheffield is the paradise 
of the weary. It has no villa of the wealthy ; 
no social conventionalities ; no fashionable 
mandates to obey ; society's giddy whirl and 
the Ixion-wheel of business are stopped ; " early 
to bed and late to rise " is the improved maxim 
of daily practice, and with this distinctive and 
sole asset of restfulness as its stock-in-trade, 
Sheffield receives a very large patronage of 
summer euests from the ereat cities. " Coun- 
try board " is the desideratum, and hence, al- 
though a second hotel has just been built and 
is filled with guests, the villagers and the far- 
mers in the vicinity reap a very large harvest 
by entertaining summer visitors. Good whole- 
some food, plenty of cream, fresh air, green 
pastures, and early hours, and no noise more 
disturbins: than the chanticleer's summons to 
waken, or the cricket's lullaby to sleep — these 
are the attractions which have made Sheffield 
hold its own relatively with the other resorts 
of Berkshire. 

But these are not all the attractions. Shef- 
field, as the oldest town in the Berkshires, 
possesses a historic interest. 

The tide of settlement flowed over the Hoo- 
sacs soon after 1725, and it came by the way 
of an Indian trail which led from Westfield 



264 Lenox 

through a region now occupied by the towns 
of Blanclford, Otis, Monterey, Great Har- 
rington, and North Egremont — all in Berk- 
shire — to Kinderhook and Albany. This trail 
came through what is now the village street 
of Great Barrington, and, as Great Barrington 
was not set off from Sheffield, of which it was 
originally a part, until 1761, it will be seen 
that Sheffield, in the extreme southern part of 
Berkshire County, was, during the early years 
of settlement, the important town, as its 
" North Parish," or Great Barrington, was 
later the capital, remaining such until 1787, 
when Lenox was made the shire-town. The 
story of the early settlement of Sheffield, which 
was incorporated in 1733, is not unlike that of 
many another New England town. Between 
Sheffield and Westfield as late as 1735, ^^ i^ 
recorded, there was only one house. It was 
wilderness "vast and primeval " all about. In 
1735 the present Congregational church of 
Sheffield village was organized, and to the 
council which installed the first minister of the 
church came delegates " from the neighbor- 
ing [!] churches." Jonathan Edwards rode 
hither to that council from his Northampton 
parish fifty miles away ! 

The story of the church is the story of the 



The Vicinage 265 

town in New England until the disestablish- 
ment of Congregationalism in 1834, and so 
the village church is the centre of interest in 
those early days. Everybody was taxed to 
support it and had a voice in its affairs, unless 
he "certificated," i. e., obtained a certificate from 
the civil officer to the effect that he, the holder 
thereof, had other religious preferences, and 
so was excused from the village tax for the 
support of the Congregational church. The 
amusing story is told that in one of these 
Berkshire towns a person having Episcopal 
preferences applied for the usual certificate, 
and it was made out in this way: " This is to 
certify that A. B, has renounced the Christian 
religion and joined the Episcopal church ! " 
It is all amusing and very interesting how at 
the raising of the church in Sheffield so many 
"gallons of rhumb" were drunk; how one of 
its ministers, the eccentric Dr. Ephraim Jud- 
son, pastor here from 1791 until 1813, used 
sometimes to deliver his sermons sitting, and 
occasionally, when the heat was intense, would 
give out a long hymn of ten stanzas, and then 
leave the church to get some fresh air while the 
singing was in progress ; how intense a Jeffer- 
sonian Democrat he was in a Federal stronghold 
yet making no enemies by his partisanship 



266 • Lenox 

because he never preached poHtics "in the 
pulpit," and never alluded to political matters 
except in the presence of his loving kin- 
dred ! In the adjoining "North Parish" of 
the town, now Great Barrington, was preach- 
ing contemporaneously with the first pastor of 
the Sheffield church the illustrious theologian 
the Rev. Samuel Hopkins. 

Meantime the town was growing, helped by 
the increased immigration hither at the close 
of the French and Indian wars. The news of 
the surrender of Louisbourg, 1745, and of 
the fall of Quebec in 1759 brought no small 
joy and relief to the Berkshire settlers, who 
had been harassed by the incursions of maraud- 
ing bands of hostile Indians in league with the 
French. " Church services," a local historian 
says, "were interrupted to give thanks." It 
must also have been an occasion of interest to 
the people of Sheffield when Ethan Allen led 
the captured train of artillery from Fort Ticon- 
deroga through the town of Great Barrington, 
and when Burgoyne encamped there on his 
way with his disheartened troops to Boston 
after his ill-luck at Saratoga. Here the Revo- 
lutionary spirit ran high, as in other parts of 
the country, and here, later, the disgraceful 
Shays' rebellion reared its viperous head. 



The Vicinage 267 

Otherwise, the progress of the town was nor- 
mal, quiet, and steady; farms tilled, population 
growing so that at the beginning of the first 
century after its settlement it was about two 
thousand, and the church and its minister the 
centre of village life in the piping times of 
peace. 

Sheffield is noted as the birthplace of some 
great men in different walks of life : George 
F. Root, the noted composer ; President Bar- 
nard of Columbia University, and Dr. Orville 
Dewey, the distinguished Unitarian divine. 
Orville Dewey's change of faith from ortho- 
doxy to Unitarianism was one of the stirnng 
events of the day in his native village, where 
an intensely Calvinistic theology was dominant, 
but the people have long since forgiven him 
his defection, because their own standards have 
broadened, because he became a distinguished 
leader and a famous preacher among the early 
Unitarians, and because his descendants, lov- 
ing the town their fathers loved, have estab- 
lished a local lyceum, "The Friendly Union," 
whose beautiful stone building, buiU in modern 
style, furnishes a place for the regular winter 
courses of lectures and entertainments, as well 
as for the housing of the town library. 

Each town of Berkshire has a picturesque 



268 Lenox 

beauty, a historic interest, a peculiar claim and 
hold upon those who know the story of its rise 
and development, and it is not strange that all 
this is causing the region to be more eagerly 
sought out from year to year. The summer 
season in Sheffield is short, usually the brief 
period of the vacation in the schools, July 
and August, but while it lasts it is intense, 
and many of the guests there have been coming 
to this quiet old place for several seasons. It 
is only at the gateway of the Berkshires, but 
its convenient access from New York brings 
to it an increasing patronage. 

BERKSHIRE DESERTED VILLAGES 

Berkshire has many " sweet Auburns," only 
they do not "lie on the plain." They are 
the hill-towns, inaccessible, exposed, desolate, 
yet once teeming with life and animated with 
the moving pictures of profitable industries. 
To-day the once verdant pastures and meadows 
have literally grown up to timber again ; 
the weather-beaten outbuildinors " filled with 
plenty " once are now crumbling to their ruin, 
and the plain farmhouses where dwelt a pious, 
hard-working, and simple yeomanry are unten- 
anted, while in many a field the implement is 
rust-eaten where it was left when the final chap- 



The Vicinae^e :>6g 



"fe 



ter in the book of the Berkshire exodus was 
written. 

I visited one section of this reofion one bitter 
midwinter day not many years ago, driving 
through — perhaps I should have said scaHng — 
the southeastern portion of the county, which 
Hes seven hundred feet up from the villages 
alongthe Housatonic, and inwhich are the towns 
of New Marlborough, Monterey, and Sandis- 
field. My companion, the minister in two of the 
places named, said to me as we neared Sandis- 
field : " You will not know when you get to it." 
Yet here in 1800 was a population of nearly 
two thousand, and the fourth town in size and 
importance in the county. Now " the decent 
church tops the neighboring hill," lonely relic of 
a former grandeur, but that is all that remains! 
And here we are almost as much higher than 
Great Barrington as Great Barringrton is higrher 
than New York, on the tip-top part of this 
ridge, which runs along the eastern part of 
Berkshire and is the water-shed of the Con- 
necticut and Housatonic rivers. Here was 
the one main and central street of the village, 
the ** four corners " hard by, and around this 
church-crowned mount streaming from all di- 
rections upon the Sabbath days towards this 
sacred peak was gathered an industrious and 



270 Lenox 

thrifty people. The town lay on the highway 
from Westfield over the Hoosacs into Berk- 
shire, the thoroughfare that was originally 
an Indian trail and led to Sheffield in the 
Housatonic Valley. Along it bowled the an- 
cient stage-coach past Three-Mile Hill and 
Six-Mile Pond, which have now been rechris- 
tened with a more ambitious nomenclature. 

I find this note in the account of some travels 
of Professor Benjamin Silliman, the distin- 
guished physicist, who in a journey from New 
Haven to Lenox and beyond passed through 
Sandisfield, September, 1819: "It was quite 
dark before we arrived at Sandisfield, but our 
road was Q^ood and the welcome lieht of the 
inn at length caught our eyes. We slept in 
a great vacant ball-room." The church which 
stands on that Sandisfield hilltop now is the 
lineal successor of the ancient edifice, and the 
site is a good place to pull out Goldsmith's 
Deserted Village and reread its lines, which 
oflow with a vivid lifrht in the midst of the 
thronging fancies the place awakens, — 

''Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close 
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose," — 

and are literally true when, describing the vil- 
lage pastor. Goldsmith says : 



The Vicinage 271 

" A man was he to all the country dear 
And passing rich with forty pounds a year." 

As a matter of fact, that was just what was 
voted the first pastor of the Sandisfield church, 
the Rev. CorneHus Jones. Here Is the record 
at his settlement. May 19, 1756: "Voted to 
pay ^40, and the minister's lot," — which was 
usually a piece of wood-land which furnished 
" fier-wood," and was given in fee to the first 
settled minister. It may be added that an inter- 
esting feature of the ordination of Mr. Jones 
and his settlement over the Sandisfield church 
was that the services were held in a barn, and 
the moderator of the council was Jonathan 
Edwards, another member of the council 
being Samuel Hopkins. Mr. Jones, a gradu- 
ate of Harvard, 1752, remained only a short 
time, and was succeeded by the Rev. Eleazer 
Storrs (Yale, 1762), who served here in the 
ministry for thirty-one years, and was followed 
by the Rev. Levi White (Dartmouth, 1796), 
who continued in the Sandisfield pastorate 
thirty-four years, from 1798 until 1832. 
Goldsmith's original 

*' Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power, 
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour," 

doubtless survived in any one of this apostolical 



2/2 Lenox 

succession, but I fear the poet's description of 
" sweet Auburn's " pastor as a man who " quite 
forgot the vices " of his people " in their woe " 
would hardly apply to any New England min- 
istry of the period named. They were men, 
those eighteenth-century Berkshire ministers, 
cast in a heroic mould ; poorly paid, supple- 
menting their stipend often by farm labors, 
grounded in the bed-rock principles of an 
intolerant Calvinism, yet sincere, sacrificing, 
zealous servants of their fellow-men, and in 
many of these parishes through the county 
are buried near the churches to which they 
ministered so long and well. 

New Marlborough, once an educational cen- 
tre, is the next town to Sandisfield, and ideally 
located, with views rivalling those of Lenox, 
but is only a shadow of its former self, with 
property selling at a song. It is now looming 
up a little into prominence as a quiet resort, 
and there is a project on paper, if not on foot, 
to connect this beautiful town with Great Har- 
rington by trolley. Its old academy is now in 
the season a commodious and comfortable 
hotel, and there are other inviting boarding- 
houses in the village. Monterey, Otis, Becket, 
Washington, Peru, Windsor, Florida, Savoy, are 
all towns of which Sandisfield and New Marl- 



The Vicinage 273 

borough are types, dreary and desolate if one 
considers merely their inaccessibility and isola- 
tion, but each one having individual excellences 
and very interesting histories. Tyringham has 
alluringly appealed to not a few literary work- 
men of note, and affords an ideal retreat. 
New Ashford, Cheshire, Lanesborough, Han- 
cock, and Alford on the opposite side of the 
county belong to the same class of " decadent " 
towns, i. e., towns which have been left stranded 
by the opening up of the Great West, by the 
coming of better means of transportation into 
the lower levels along the Housatonic, and by 
the ruinous competitions of modern industries. 
At Alford may still be seen the saw left in the 
block of marble with a slab half sliced off, just 
where the implement stopped when the marble 
works were abandoned years ago. 

The problems which these towns present are 
peculiar along religious, educational, industrial, 
and social lines. They are not different from 
other parts of "decadent rural New England." 
Religiously the Berkshire decadent villages do 
not suffer so much as they do educationally 
and socially. Two county missionaries regu- 
larly visit these towns, in addition to the regular 
services of resident pastors. All of these vil- 
lages have a long and honorable history going 



2 74 Lenox 

back into the eighteenth century, and many a 
one has been the birthplace and home of some 
who have risen to distinction in letters or 
finance. Their isolation has meant for them 
desolation. Indeed, it would seem that those 
who have become eminent and affluent and 
who trace back their beginnings to any of these 
towns, could not better pay a debt to the place 
of their nativity and childhood than by estab- 
lishing travelling lectureships and libraries. 
Intellectual vacuity is the great curse of these 
towns, and as " nature abhors a vacuum," an 
empty mind is pretty apt to be the depository 
of all sorts of vagaries, isms, and trivalities. 




VII 



THE GENESIS OF VILLAGE IMPROVE- 
MENT AND THE LAUREL HILL ASSO- 
CIATION, STOCKBRIDGE, MASS. 

MY theme, " Village Improvement," has a 
technical meaning, inclusive of hardly 
more than the hygienic and external condi- 
tions of the village : sanitation, good water, 
neat streets, trim sidewalks, handsome road- 
sides, attractive dooryards, shrubbery-hidden 
objects of offence, and an agreeable look to 
the town as a whole, by the planting or re- 
moval of trees, by preventing unsightly " dump- 
ing places " in the outskirts of the village, and 
by a general oversight in the matter of the 
streets, their roadbed, their sprinkling, and the 
lighting of the same. And I am to give as a 
concrete example of all this, a Berkshire vil- 
lage, viz., Stockbridge, known far and wide as 
one of the loveliest villages of America, and 

275 



276 Lenox 

its village improvement society, the Laurel 
Hill Association, which has been the parent of 
upwards of a thousand similar organizations 
scattered throughout our country as far as the 
Pacific. But " village improvement " as an 
ideal is something more than this technical 
conception of it. A good library, well-ap- 
pointed schools, a Law and Order League, a 
Citizens and Taxpayers Association are prime 
requirements and essentials in the general idea 
of village improvement. The health of the 
village must be considered, its appearance 
beautified, its mind fed on the best literature, 
its pauperism and pauper spirit decreased, its 
social life infused with inspiration, with sympa- 
thy and benevolence, its morale improved, its 
administration made economical and effective. 
Village improvement as a final ideal means all 
that. It is not decorative ; it is regenerative. 
It is not to beautify simply but to beatify. 
We have been handicapped long enough by 
the tyranny of that olden line, "God made 
the country ; man made the town " ; and now 
we are trying to get more of God into the 
city and more of man into the country. Vil- 
lage improvement is not something laid on 
from the outside, but the working out of 
mighty principles from within. It does not 



Laurel Hill Association 277 

have in mind a single object, but it takes in 
the whole village structure, its health, its ap- 
pearance, its administration, its life. And yet 
I wish in this chapter to treat village Improve- 
ment in its partial and technical sense ; though 
the reader will not forget its larger and truer 

meaning. 

Village improvement in this narrower sig- 
nification is of comparatively recent origin ; 
and it may fairly be said that not yet has it at- 
tained wide acceptance. An article appeared 
in The Atlantic Monthly for 1858, on " Farm- 
ing Communities in New England," by J. G. 
Holland, and I have just read that protest 
against the unsightliness of farm villages. It 
evoked a good deal of feeling, adverse and 
favorable, and inspired some books. Five 
years before that the Laurel Hill Association 
(the village improvement society of Stock- 
bridge, Mass.) was started, though with the 
idea"^ first of beautifying a village pleasure 
ground and caring for the cemetery. I pre- 
sume none would claim that "Laurel Hill" 
started with the very definite and well-mapped- 
out idea of what it subsequently and very soon 
became, and what it now so eminently stands 
for. Almost all great movements are the ac- 
cretions of littles. The idea works out more 



2/8 Lenox 

clearly with more intelligent discernment of 
new needs. To Stockbridge, however, justly 
belong the authorship and the sponsorship of 
the village improvement idea ; an idea which is 
scarcely yet fifty years old in America ; for it 
may be said that the '' Common" which was a 
feature of New England villages in the earliest 
days was more practical than aesthetic ; a place 
of common pasturage rather than of pleasure ; 
for cattle more than for men. Boston " Com- 
mon " was so used until well into the last cen- 
tur)\ and now its forty-six acres make the 
beauty and charm of the city. The Amherst 
" Common " is another instance, and there are 
a few others, yet even these spacious com- 
mons were not objects of beauty as pastures. 
The modern spirit transformed them into 
parks. Would that there might have been 
more of them! 

The farm village of fifty years ago — }-es, 
much less time ago than that — was absolutely 
a stranger to aesthetic ideals and aims in its 
appearance, and hundreds and thousands of 
villages still are. Go into any one of these 
towns and see the general indifference to ex- 
ternal attractiveness, — carriages and horses 
hitched to the curbs along the streets, papers 
and refuse heaps lying in the road, grass by 



Laurel Hill Association 279 

the roadside uncut and white with dust be- 
cause the streets are never sprinkled, unweeded 
walks and unshaven lawns in dooryards, and 
so on. We are gradually awaking- out of all 
this, but it is recent. Some of our villages 
have taken the matter up vigorously, and the 
intensity of our present devotion to aesthetic 
ideals is in inverse proportion to the lethargy 
and reluctance we showed in comingf to them. 
In the village of Lenox, where there has 
been a village improvement society for about 
a score of years, we have recently taken up the 
beautifying of the grounds about the railroad 
station, pulling down an unsightly shed and 
planting flowers and shrubs ; and the latest 
thing has been the adornment of our school 
grounds here and there in the township and 
the decoration of school interiors. This latter 
work has been aided by the Village Improve- 
ment Society though springing from the town 
itself. The contagion of the spirit of village 
improvement spreads. There is an awaken- 
ing appreciation of the ministry of the beau- 
tiful everywhere. Some benevolent circles 
exist simply to hang pictures on the walls 
of the poor, and to beautify their tenements 
with flowers. It would seem strange, indeed, 
if this growing recognition of the power of 



28o Lenox 

the beautiful in our lives did not reach our 
farm villages. It has reached them, but only 
within recent years. The old type of farm 
village is slowly changing. The leaven of 
" Laurel Hill " is working, and the lawn-mower 
has supplanted the old scythe and sickle, 
which made a lawn look like quadrants of 
close-cropped stubble wherever the knife had 
been. The farmer is beeinnino- to have more 
use for the ornamental, because the orna- 
mental is proving itself more useful to him in 
selling his property. Our New England vil- 
lages, which always have been far ahead of 
most European villages, because of their in- 
telligence and thrift, have nevertheless fought 
the spirit of improvement. In the place where 
the horse-rake stopped in mid-August there it 
stayed through the winter and spring, and in 
the place where the bob-sleighs scraped the 
ground last in the March days there they 
rested through the long summer. " Why put 
away tools ! What use to make any extra 
steps ! There are weeds in the walk, yes, but 
you can walk there can't you ? Cut the grass 
in the dooryard ? Why man, that grass 
means a few more foaming pails of milk to 
me ! " — so said the farmer of yesterday. And 
his farmer-neighbor down the road a piece 



Laurel Hill Association 281 

did n't agree with him, but kept his fences in 
repair, his walks weeded, his lawn mowed, his 
tools put away, his outbuildings painted or 
hidden by trees and shrubbery, and one day 
sold to great advantage, while the other, with 
a finer outlook or a better soil, went grubbing 
along, unable to sell. Village improvement 
appreciates real estate, and this is the sovereign 
argument that is changing the face of things. 

J. G. Holland, in the article in The Atlan- 
tic to which we have referred, said that the 
reason why the boys left the farms and went 
to the cities was because farm life was unre- 
lieved dulness — nothincr but a orrind ; the 
same dull monotony staring at one daily ; no 
place for the agreeable, the pleasant, the orna- 
mental. It was so then ; I o;uess it is still so. 
It was a stock phrase in his day, " How shall 
we keep the boys on the farms ? " And his 
answer was practically along the lines of vil- 
lage improvement ; and that was forty-four 
years ago. Make villages pleasant to the eye. 
A beautiful exterior goes far to redeem the 
hardest lot. The sentimental uses of the 
beautiful are as distinct and valuable as its 
commercial uses. It was difficult to make 
men see this, brought up as all our New Eng- 
land villages have been, on ideas of thrift and 



282 Lenox 

economy, " plain living and high thinking," 
simplicity and utility. " Laurel Hill " voiced a 
needed reform ; is voicing it to-day. Twenty 
years ago its daughters had become so nu- 
merous that a national association of villaofe 
improvement societies was formed at Green- 
wood, N. J. (1882), and many interesting 
papers were read. 

So much for the history of the movement 
and the need of it. Let us come now more 
closely in touch with the movement itself and 
study its workings in the parent society ; and 
then we will ask ourselves a few general ques- 
tions growing out of our study of this theme. 

To understand " Laurel Hill" one needs to 
know Stockbridge, its quiet and classic dignity, 
its beautiful environment in the Berkshire 
Hills, its inheritance of rich traditions, its 
spirit of village pride, not to say hauteur. 

To the Athenian all the world was barbarian, 
and it was imagined that if Jove came to 
earth he would reside in the many-templed 
and altar-strewn city of Athens. I was pres- 
ent once at an anniversary of " Laurel Hill," 
not ten years ago, when one of the speakers, a 
gentleman well-known in letters and in the 
church, a far-famed traveller, absolutely capped 
the climax of village pride by asserting that 




The Indian Monument, Stockhridge, Mass. 



Laurel Hill Association 283 

" Heaven was but another Stockbridge," This 
was rather rankHng to the mind and heart of a 
Lenox man, for he has been inclined to shape 
his dreams as to what Paradise is from his 
own exalted visions on the heights. But after 
all village pride is as good a thing for a 
community as self-respect is for the individual. 
Stockbridge shows the dignity of its antece- 
dent years in the step of its citizens on the 
street. It is the old axiom noblesse oblige 
working out ; a walking worthy of its history, 
its traditions, its beautiful location. The vil- 
lage lies in the heart of the mountains ; the 
winding^ river meanders throuoh it ; a wide 
elm-shaded street passes through the length of 
it; at one end of this street is the Indian 
burial-ground with its appropriate and beauti- 
ful monolith ; at the other, a half-mile distant, 
is the pleasure park, a wooded hill, in the 
early years a place for council to the Indians 
and deeded in trust to the town in 1834 by 
the Sedgwick family. Later this park was 
made over to the " Laurel Hill Association," 
which takes its name from the abundance 
of laurel growing in this park. It is in this 
park that the annual meetings of " Laurel 
Hill" are held, when, with speaker (often 
a distinguished man), with band, and simple 



284 Lenox 

refreshments, the work of the year is celebrated. 
I have often been present at these meetings 
when the villagers turn out e7i masse, and I 
honestly believe "Laurel Hill" owes some- 
thing of its success to this yearly assembly. 
The Lenox Village Improvement Society has 
never observed this feature of "Laurel Hill," 
partly from the trouble of the thing, partly 
from scepticism as to its practical value. Stock- 
bridge, on the contrary, never omits it. It 
is the yearly village festival, and now and 
then when a speaker like Edward Everett 
Hale is secured, as two years ago, the sur- 
rounding towns send large delegations. Every- 
body goes for miles around, and the address 
is always pertinent to the day and theme. 
Really Stockbridge ought to preserve and 
publish these addresses for distribution or 
sale. 

" Laurel Hill " began, then, forty-nine years 
ago ; its first distinct aim being to put the 
recently bestowed pleasure park in good shape, 
then the village cemetery, then as the work 
opened out before it, it extended to the whole 
village. 

o 

" Trees," says one of the early workers, " were 
planted by the roadside wherever trees were lacking. 
The children were made helpers by calling trees by 



Laurel Hill Association 2S5 

their names if they would watch and care for them for 
two years. Others were paid to pick up loose papers 
and unsightly things in the streets. Then the broad 
village street was graded to a uniform level ; walks 
pushed out to the remoter parts of the town, and prop- 
erty-owners encouraged to keep their grounds and walks 
in order." 

And then the work enlarged so upon the 
hands of the society that special committees 
were appointed to look after separate parts of 
the township, which was mapped out for that 
purpose, and now every square inch of ground 
in the limits of the town is under the eye of 
its special committee ; and finally, the work 
still enlarging, each department, sanitation, 
finance, trees, lamp-lighting, etc., has its 
separate committee. The district comittees 
taken together make up the executive commit- 
tee of the whole, never less than fifteen, hold 
monthly meetings, and this larger committee 
has power to appropriate moneys, direct all im- 
provements undertaken by the society, arrange 
for annual meetings, and ofTer prizes, or pre- 
miums, to the villagers who shall make the 
best showing or the most improvement on their 
places during the year. This is a good deal of 
an incentive on some streets. 

The money for the work of " Laurel Hill" 



286 Lenox 

comes from the interest on investments (it 
has a fund of $5000), an annual appropriation 
from the town, from private subscriptions and 
Hfe memberships. But it must be remembered 
that a village improvement society could be 
started anywhere without a cent of money in 
the treasury; in fact much of its work does not 
call for money. As Mr. Waring says, " What 
most detracts from the good appearance of 
any village is the slovenly look which comes 
from badly hung gates, crooked fences, absent 
pickets, and general shiftlessness about private 
places." The spirit of that remark is true, 
even if we have given up fences and gates 
now, because we no longer pasture horses in 
the open streets. Little improvements by pri- 
vate owners are what make a village beautiful. 
One place in neglect can ruin the appearance 
of a street. Money will prevent this by offering 
a premium, but village and neighborly pride 
ought to go far to remedy it. I was talking 
with a gardener of one of the large estates in 
Lenox last month and I asked him how it was 
that almost all the gardeners in charge of the 
elaborate "places" on these heights were 
Englishmen. He replied, " Why ! every Eng- 
lishman is a gardener ; every English village 
provides commons where the poor are assigned 



Laurel Hill Association 287 

places to cultivate. But I presume the great 
reason," he said, " is because we have lived all 
these centuries side by side with a noble class, 
whose fine estates are graced by gardens, and 
the long familiarity with flowers and hot- 
houses and magnificent grounds has insensibly 
worked far into the En^Hsh character. An 
EngfHshman loves flowers and likes to care for 
them." And then I remembered what Miss 
Sedgwick, the American writer of the middle of 
the last century, — he'-self a Stockbridge wo- 
man, — wrote in 1841, in her book of travels in 
England, how she was impressed all through 
England among all classes, even the poorest 
of the poor, with the way every square inch of 
ground was put to flowers ; and she contrasted 
again and again these two-by-four courts of the 
poor or middle class, bright with flowers, with 
her own dull villages in Berkshire ; "land, land, 
land everywhere and never a flower ! " I have 
often wondered If " Laurel Hill Association" 
did n't after all owe much of the praise of its 
origin to the gifted author, whose chaste, refined 
taste and free spirit won the immortal laurels 
of authorship by the very message of her books, 
which was to make life beautiful. It is said 
that " Laurel Hill " owes its origin to a woman, 
Mrs. J. Z. Goodrich, who did indeed write and 



288 Lenox 

labor for it until she got it started, and who 
kept it going during its early infantile years ; 
but how much did she owe to her towns- 
woman's books, read at that time all over the 
world, passing through many editions and 
making Stockbridge famous by the people they 
drew to the home of Miss Catherine Maria 
Sedgwick? Miss Sedgwick's message was to 
the villages, how to make them beautiful with 
pleasant, ideal homes. But, however that may 
be, Mrs. Goodrich was the organizer, the 
anointed apostle of village improvement, the 
"stirrer-up of things" generally; and thus 
" Laurel Hill" in a way is another indication 
of the manner in which woman can serve her 
town, as a humble but most efficient citizen. 
Before woman clamors for "rights" she has 
not, let her use the " rights " she has. Village 
improvement is within her sphere and influ- 
ence ; many believe that this is her work, a 
work she can do best, and certainly " Laurel 
Hill" believes that, as a glance at the person- 
nel of its committees attests. 

The success of "Laurel Hill" is due to a 
good many causes. It has, in the first place, 
a distinct idea of what it wants to do. It 
systematizes this work so that all the interests 
of the village are covered by appropriate com- 



Laurel Hill Association 289 

mittees. It interests the whole village by 
putting itself, through district committees, 
in touch with all parts of the township. Tax- 
payers living in the outskirts of a town 
naturally protest against all the improvements 
being made in the central part of the village. 
" Laurel Hill " has also owed something- of 
its success to its success. The town is inter- 
ested in keeping alive and effective its own 
peculiar institution, which has given birth to a 
thousand and more similar ones. " Laurel Hill " 
owes much to its own anniversary meetings, 
to keeping itself out of the hands of politics, 
to getting the town to refrain from organizing 
a " fire district " by which money now ex- 
pended by "Laurel Hill" would then be 
expended by the town, to interesting the 
women, and so on, but its chief success arises 
from the results as seen in the village itself. 
It has justified its right to be a thousand 
times. One cannot be an hour in Stock- 
bridge without being impressed with the work 
of this society. At the railroad station, as 
one gets off the train, the flowers, the p07'te 
cochere, the handsome structure itself, the 
signs, " No dumping here," as one comes to 
a spot that otherwise would be the depository 
of cans, bottles, papers, and refuse, the absence 



2go Lenox 

of unsightly objects in the streets, the beaiiti- 
tiful cemetery scrupulously neat (and who 
has n't seen country cemeteries in shocking- 
neglect?), the broad street faultlessly graded, 
elm bordered, and always wearing a charm 
of repose and quiet grandeur, the houses anci 
lawns — all these tell the story of public spirit 
and village pride. But they only tell part 
of the story, though a great part. " Laurel 
Hill " is a centre of creative impulses which 
express themselves later by town action in 
practical measures of sanitation and water 
supply, and it has so preached the gospel 
of beauty all these years as to have evoked 
in the entire township a sense of the beautiful. 
Let us come then to a few general reflec- 
tions as growing out of all this, and the first 
is this : The success of any work of this kind 
depends upon a general interest on the part 
of the entire village. How arouse and main- 
tain that interest ? Follow the example of 
the parent society. Interest all classes, even 
the children. Offer prizes for the best places 
and most improvements. Map off the entire 
township into districts, so that the whole 
village shall come in contact with the work. 
Have annual meetings, yearly village festivals. 
Show the landowner that village improve- 



Laurel Hill i\ssociation 291 

ment enhances the value of his property. 
Devise ingenious schemes to arouse interest 
and to avoid ruts. Show work done as a 
specimen of what can be done. Study the 
bibliography of the subject and have the 
books bearing on it in the town library. I 
am quite sure that in Stockbridge the work 
is done by the village. It is the " fad " of 
none. It should be everybody's work and 
everybody should be drawn into it. But 
secondly, every village improvement society 
will have its own peculiar local problems. 
In Lenox, one is how to discriminately and 
reverently apply the axe to some of the trees. 
A good sewer system, the best of water from 
mountain springs, Telford roads, a splendid li- 
brary, electric lights, efficient schools, good 
sidewalks pushing out gradually to the remote 
sections, liberal appropriations ; all these should 
be supplemented by that vigilance which con- 
serves the "views" for the pleasure of the 
passer-by in the streets, and prevents the land- 
scape from being absolutely shut off by or- 
namental or wayside shrubbery. Some tree 
cutting has been done in recent years under the 
direction of Mr. Sargent, of New York. Three 
lakes are visible from Lenox, but the trees at 
their borders have been allowed to grow so that 



2C)2 Lenox 

now these placid bodies of water embosomed 
in the hills are actually dwindling in size to 
the far-off observer, and the view, as we say, 
has grown up and out. 

I am conscious that I have dealt with my 
subject in a fragmentary, partial way, but 
let it be said in conclusion that plainly the 
curse of the country towns is in their empti- 
ness, — nothing to engage the mind, which 
thus becomes vacant, a capital place for all 
mischief and evil to find lodg^ment. Villao^e 
improvement should always work up to its 
higher and larger and truer sense ; and aside 
from the provision of a good library, keeping 
taxes down, cultivating a high morale, killing 
the pauper spirit, and demanding good gov- 
ernment, which go with the larger meaning, 
somethinor should be done to relieve this 
vacuousness of country towns, by entertain- 
ments, lyceums, lecture courses, gymnasium, 
socials, and what not. In the village there 
is nothing to think about, nothing to take up 
the eye, and so the youth are on the streets 
at night with nothing more lively than a 
prayer-meeting to attend, and usually line 
up around the post-office and stare into 
vacancy. That sort of thing is perilous. 
Their minds will not be vacant long. It 



Laurel Hill Association 293 

would, in my opinion, be an act of religion 
for the church to amuse this class. At any 
rate to improve the village will be to strike 
at this spirit of vacuousness someway. 

Let me then sum it up by saying : The 
ideal village is one whose health is con- 
served, whose appearance is tidy and hand- 
some, whose mental life is fed on the best 
books, whose morale is self-respecting and 
law-abiding, whose administration is honest, 
efficient, and economical, whose children have 
careful instruction in good schools, whose 
pauper spirit is killed, whose taxes are not 
burdensome, and whose social life is kept 
fresh and healthful by entertainments, lectures, 
and pleasant gatherings ; and to the attain- 
ment of all this, "Laurel Hill" points the 
way. It is one of the many original move- 
ments conceived and cradled on Berkshire 
soil. 




VIII 



THE CHURCH OF BERKSHIRE UNTIL THE 
DISESTABLISHMENT IN 1834 

THE aim of this chapter is not so much to 
write history as to present retrospective 
sketches. History implies continuity in the 
narrative ; retrospection is a sort of general 
survey at a glance. History is the completed 
picture, down to the minutest detail ; retro- 
spection is only the rough outlines of the 
picture, faintly sketched in. 

Berkshire, lying spread out upon the tops of 
the foot-hills of the Green Mountain range, 
lay tmscaled by those who came either with 
missionary or domestic intent until towards 
the middle of the eighteenth century. It was in 
1734, after a futile attempt at colonization a 
few years previous to this, that the first settlers 
crossed the Hoosac range, in what is now the 
southeastern part of the county, and took up 

294 



Established Church of Berkshire 295 

their abode in Sheffield. It will be remem- 
bered that within twenty-five years after the Pil- 
grims first set foot on these shores Springfield 
was settled, and yet for almost a century longer 
those who lived to the east of the Hoosacs sat 
down in grim despair before the mountainous 
barrier that separated them from this beautiful 
and inviting region. 

There were good reasons for this as we have 
stated, but it is important for us to note the 
fact that these early settlers who took up 
claims and began to form communities in 
Berkshire not only brought their Church, the 
Congregational, with them, but they brought 
a Church of a settled policy and splendid his- 
tory. Harvard College was already a hundred 
years old ; and Yale, though more recently 
founded, was yet strong and of mature growth. 
Cambridge and Savoy with their formularies 
were far down the years and the Mathers 
had wielded their influence and gone. Even 
Saybrook with its unifying trend — an early step 
in the direction of welding the churches more 
closely and firmly together — was far enough 
in the past to have become a historic fact, and 
a strong factor, in the Church these settlers 
came to plant "in the wilderness." 

It is noticeable, then, that with this aureole 



296 Lenox 

of history about them — and true to the Ger- 
manic idea of a close cementine of the ties 
between State and Church — they scarcely put 
an axe to a tree, with which to build their rude 
cabins, ere they had appropriated money for 
the hiring of a minister and the support of the 
gospel. The incorporation of the town and 
the organization of the church went practically 
hand in hand. It is significant, perhaps, that 
the first man to have preached the gospel in 
this county, to whom Sheffield extended a 
call June 7, 1734, was one Ebenezer Devo- 
tion, and as I read the records of the work, the 
trials, and the results of Congregationalism in 
this county, it has been one ever-glowing and 
ever-eloquent sermon upon such earnestness 
and faithfulness as can be called by no other 
name than devotion, devotion that vies with, 
if it does not pale, the annals of many another 
sublime epoch in the history of the universal 
Church. 

It is scarcely needful for me to say that 
Berkshire County was settled from the south 
toward the north, and as the centre of popu- 
lation was tending northward, so the courts 
were moved first from Great Barrington to 
Lenox and finally to Pittsfield. It is this 
fact of the early settlement of southern Berk- 



Established Church of Berkshire 297 
shire which oives some of the churches in the 

o 

southern part of the county a greater antiquity 
than any in the northern. Ten years after the 
very first settlers had crossed the Hoosac 
ridge of the Green Mountains, — emigrating 
from Westfield to Sheffield by the most direct 
route as a glance at the map will show, — 
there were still very few settlers in Berkshire ; 
and what few there were were clustered in the 
south and southeastern portions of the county. 
Yet in the first decade of growth, four churches 
— of the Conorreo;;ational order of course — had 
become organized and were efficiently at work. 
The beloved Sergeant was fluently and earn- 
estly proclaiming the gospel to the Indians at 
Stockbridge, the second church to be organized 
in the county, that at Sheffield having been 
organized in 1735, two years before the Stock- 
bridge church. In Sheffield was Jonathan 
Hubbard, to whose installation over the church 
there the great Jonathan Edwards came, mak- 
ing his way from Northampton doubtless for 
the first time into this valley where he was 
afterward to be a pastor himself. 

In Great Barrington, eight years after the 
church in Sheffield was organized, a young 
man of twenty - two years, fresh from his 
studies under Edwards, and who was to leave 



298 Lenox 

a marked influence on New England thought, 
namely, Samuel Hopkins, was beginning his 
long pastorate over that people ; and in New 
Marlborough, where the church was org-anized 
in 1744, just one year after the church in 
Great Barring-ton, Thomas Strong commenced 
his labors, which, if we except the adoption of 
the " Half-way Covenant" (1769), were to be 
a blessing to that parish, for the record reads 
that he labored there exactly a third of a 
century. So far as I know, the church at 
New Marlborough was the only one in Berk- 
shire County to adopt the " Half-way Cove- 
nant," so provocative of mischief, so derogatory 
to Christian principle, and yet so thoroughly 
sanctioned by no small part of the New Eng- 
land ministry. It is worth noting in passing 
that these four men, the pioneer pastor- 
preachers in the county, — Sergeant, Hubbard, 
Hopkins, and Strong, — were young men, aged 
twenty- four, thirty-two, twenty-two, and twenty- 
five respectively. They labored side by side in 
harness for a considerable time, Sergeant the 
first to break the circle, his death occurring when 
he was only thirty-nine. Eleven years after 
Sergeant's death Hopkins removed to Newport. 
Three years later Hubbard died, and after four 
years more Strong passed to his reward. 



Established Church of Berkshire 299 

But in the meantime other churches were 
springing up, — in the next decade and a half 
three, Tyringham (1750), Sandisfield (1756), 
and Becket (1758); all, it will be seen, in 
the southern part of the county. It should 
be observed that this Tyringham church Is 
the same in continuity of life as the present 
church in Monterey, the town having been di- 
vided fifty years ago, and what was South 
Tyringham became Monterey ; and it should 
also be observed that he who first ministered 
to this church, from its organization until after 
the war of the Revolution, a period of thirty- 
four years, was Adonijah Bidwell, one of 
whose descendants is a deacon of the church 
in Monterey and an honored man in the 
county. 

The population of the county was now 
(1760) rather rapidly increasing. The mili- 
tary defences of Berkshire were being strength- 
ened and repaired ; and with the feeling of 
greater security came a decided increase In 
the number of colonists. In the next decade 
(1760-70) five churches are organized, four 
of which are In the north part of the county, 
namely, PIttsfield ( i 764), Lanesborough ( 1 764) 
Wllllamstown (1765), Richmond (1765), and 
Lenox (1769). Of the first-settled ministers 



300 Lenox 

over three of these churches, namely, Wil- 
Hainstown, Richmond, and Lenox, we know 
Httle more than that they were graduated 
at Yale College : Rev. Whitman Welch in 
1760, and pastor at Williamstown 1765-76, 
from which place he enlisted as chaplain of 
a reeinient in the war of the Revolution 
and died of smallpox at Quebec while in ser- 
vice, leaving his church pastorless ; Rev. J. 
Swift, graduated at Yale 1765, and pastor 
of Richmond eleven years (1765-76), when 
he was dismissed, becoming distinguished 
afterwards as one of the most useful and emi- 
nent ministers of Vermont ; and Rev. Samuel 
Monson, graduated at Yale i 763, and becom- 
ing pastor at Lenox in 1770, where he re- 
mained twenty-two years, having a difficult 
and uneventful ministry, ending in some acri- 
mony on both sides. 

The other two churches orgfanized in this 
decade, namely, Pittsfield and Lanesborough, 
had as their first settled ministers two men 
who, though differing toto cwlo politically, — Dr. 
Allen being a rabid Democrat of the Jefferson- 
ian type, and Dr. Collins a Federalist, with 
Tory leanings it was thought, — yet enjoyed 
exceedingly prosperous, useful, and long-con- 
tinued pastorates in their respective parishes. 



Established Church of Berkshire 301 

Of " Fighting Parson Allen," forty-six years 
pastor of the Pittsheld church, one could write 
a book, and we must compress the volume 
into a sentence. Up and down the county, 
rousing to democratic white heat every town, 
praying and shooting at Bennington, beset by 
factions in his parish, which toward the very 
close of his life became torn and rent on ac- 
count of his political thrusts — he feared not 
man or devil, only God. It is no wonder, 
when JefTerson was elected, that the bell-rope 
of the Pittsfield church broke throuofh violent 
ringing! Dr. Collins of the Lanesborough 
church was, next to Dr. West of Stockbridge, 
the longest settled minister in the county, Dr. 
West's pastorate being fifty-nine years, Mr. 
Collins's fifty-eight. In the very last of Mr. 
Collins's pastorate the church gave him a 
colleague, who became his coadjutor and suc- 
cessor. The elder pastor ministered in holy 
things, however, until the very last, when in 
his eighty-fourth year he died, full of years 
an 1 honors and of seals of his ministry. 

In the next decade (1770-80), the period 
of the outbreak of the war of independence, 
six churches were organized, — Peru and Egre- 
mont the first year of the decade (1770), 
Windsor (1772), Washington (1772), Adams 



302 Lenox 

(before 1778), and Otis (1779). Of these 
churches much could be said as to their early 
history, but time and space prevent. The 
churches at Egremont and Adams sustained 
troublous and short-lived careers, and died ; 
the Adams church having only, as it were, a 
momentary existence, "appearing for a little 
time and then vanishing away," and the Egre- 
mont church having a little longer lease of 
life, its pastor, Rev. E. Steele, being settled 
over it twenty-four years, when, between the 
upper millstone of the Shays rebellion and the 
nether one of sectarian rivalries, the little 
church feebly gasped its expiring breath, 
knowing, however, a resurrection a score of 
years later, when it reappeared as the present 
South Egremont church. The early history 
of the Otis church formed at this period is not 
worth speaking of, as it hardly got on to its 
feet for a score of years. Of the first settled 
ministers over the churches of Peru, Windsor, 
and Washington much might be written, par- 
ticularly of Mr. Avery of Windsor, who 
though only just out of college (Yale, 1 769), 
and hardly more than two years in Windsor, 
nevertheless gathered a company of his par- 
ishioners and, four days after the battle of 
Lexing-ton, marched off to Cambridge with his 



Established Church of Berkshire 303 

troops, of whom he himself was chosen cap- 
tain. He was dismissed from his pastorate to 
take a chaplaincy in the army, and afterward 
served at Trenton, Princeton, and Bennington 
and Saratoga. John Ballantine, the first set- 
tled minister over the church in Washington, 
which was formed during this trying decade, 
is entitled to the distinction of being the 
fourth longest-settled minister in the county, 
coming next to Dr. Shepard, who is the third. 
Mr. Ballantine was a Harvard graduate, nearly 
all of his contemporaries in the ministry in 
this region being from Yale. This church 
really began to wane during Mr. Ballantine's 
ministry of forty-six years, owing to divisions 
and departures, and this candlestick, once so 
lio^ht-orivinof, seems to have been removed out 
of its place, only to be reset by Time's benef- 
icent chancres. 

In the next decade (1780-90) the churches 
organized were Lee (1780), Alford (1781), 
Dalton (1785), and West Stockbridge Centre 
(1789). Two churches of this period, Alford 
and West Stockbridge Centre, have had 
fitful lives, one, Alford, becoming extinct 
shortly after its formation, and only kept alive 
by the forbearance of the Lord and the endur- 
ance of one Rev. Aaron Kinne, who kept a 



304 Lenox 

good many candlesticks from falling in those 
early days, and the other, West Stockbridge 
Centre, which, though it has never been vigor- 
ous, still is in a better condition of work and 
promise than in some other years. The other 
churches of this period, Lee and Dalton, or- 
ganized five years apart, have in their early 
history the distinguished names of Hyde, the 
second pastor of the Lee church, and remain- 
ing there forty-one years, and Jennings, the 
second minister of Dalton, whose pastorate 
there was prolonged thirty-two years. Of Dr. 
Hyde, one of the most influential men Berk- 
shire ever had, what can one say in a single 
sentence ! A young man like all the rest, — 
scarcely out of their teens and fresh from col- 
lege and private and short readings with Drs. 
Edwards, Bellamy, or West, — he began as a 
comparative boy a work in Lee that was to 
engage him forty-one years. He must have 
been a man to whose opinions his contempo- 
raries paid great deference, because we find 
him prominently engaged in every good work 
throughout the county, in county societies as 
w^ell as amono- his ministerial brethren in their 
regular associational meetings, in the councils 
of the State as well as his own town — a veri- 
table leader, albeit a quiet, modest, faithful 



Established Church of Berkshh'e 305 

minister to the last. It is said that Dr. Backus, 
with whom Mr. Hyde read theology, said to 
him : " Why, Hyde, I sin, and repent, I sin, 
and repent ; but you don't seem to have any- 
thing to repent of." Dr. Hyde was an excep- 
tion to the Yale rule, he himself beino- a 
graduate of Dartmouth. 

The churches organized in the next decade, 
the last of the century, when the population 
of the county had increased to over 30,000, 
were Southfield (1794) and Hinsdale (1795). 
Neither of these churches started off brill- 
iantly; and indeed the Hinsdale church was 
badly handicapped with debt, owing to shrink- 
age of values from the sale of pews, which were 
bid off, as the chronicler states, " under the 
influence of the ardent," and afterward it was 
found that the bibulous purchasers had not 
the wherewith to pay. Churches were raised, 
pews sold, doctrines discussed in those days 
with the ever-accompanying supply of spirits. 

From the beginning of the century until the 
division of the Berkshire Association — Octo- 
ber,i852 — twelve churches have been organ- 
ized ; and in the following order : Savoy (181 1), 
Florida (18 14), neither of which ever had any 
life to speak of, having been extinct almost from 
birth; Mill River (1820), Curtisville (1824), 



3o6 Lenox 

North Adams (1827), Mount Washington 
(1831), extinct, West Stockbridge (1833), 
South WilHamstown (1836), South Adams 
(1840), Housatonic (1841), Pittsfield Second 
(1846), North Becket (1849), ^"d Pittsfield 
(South) (1850). It can hardly be said that 
all of these churches are stronsf and efficient ; 
though some of them are notably so, and 
others are doing faithful work up to the 
measure of their abilit}'. Four of them have 
died. Savoy, Florida, Mount Washington, and 
North Becket, the last merging with the 
Methodists. They were, but are not. Of 
the two churches organized since the old 
Berkshire Association divided, namely, White 
Oaks (1868) and New Boston (1874), it may 
be said that their feebleness is due to environ- 
ment and causes wholly beyond their control, 
as is the case with many another church of our 
order in the county. 

To retrace our steps, then, to that period 
which mig^ht be termed the Golden A^-e of 
Congregationalism in this county, let us lose 
ourselves once more amonor those distinoruished 
men whose successors we are. W^e have men- 
tioned some whose names are in close connec- 
tion with the very earliest history of the 
churches, but there are others equally and 



Established Church of Berkshire 30 



j^/ 



more renowned. It is certain that the mod- 
ern Berkshire pulpit has no reason to lightly 
esteem the work or the worth of some 
who have only lately gone from us — Mark 
Hopkins, Gladden, Munger, and Parkhurst, 
leaders in the world of thought to-day, and 
wearers of the mantles of the prophets ; and, 
moreover, we would not be understood as di- 
minishing aught the earnestness and efficiency 
of the present Berkshire ministry because we 
hold up to view the colossal labors, the faith- 
fulness and earnestness, the sturdy character, 
the mighty influence, and the eminent distinc- 
tion of those who once labored here, as pas- 
tors of the Coui^reofational churches. We 
shall only repeat the names we have already 
mentioned, which belong not only to the plant- 
ing time but to the period of the growth of these 
churches as well, as many of these first settled 
pastors remained until death at their posts, as 
we have seen : Hubbard and Sergeant, Strong 
and Bidwell, Allen and Collins and Hyde and 
others. Their immediate successors evidently 
prized their inheritance of entering into the 
labors of these proto-preachers and upholding 
the dignity and fame of the Berkshire pulpit. 
Here wrought Edwards seven years, writing 
his treatise on the Will amid the labors of 



o 



08 Lenox 



his Stockbridge pastorate, from which he was 
called to the presidency of Princeton, and to 
which he reluctantly went. Here wrought 
that other mighty theologian, Samuel Hop- 
kins, whose impress was felt for a century or 
more in all our churches and throughout our 
whole pale ; and it is pleasant to know the 
generous rivalry between these two pastors of 
neighboring Berkshire churches, Hopkins on 
the death of Serjeant recommended Edwards 
for the Stockbridge parish, and thus their 
earlier friendship was renewed ; preceptor and 
pupil once more together and under what pe- 
culiar circumstances ! Theologians of the high- 
est rank, original students of whom subsequent 
men for a long, long period were to be echoes 
or interpreters — out here on the frontier, mis- 
sionaries, so to speak, their lives often in 
jeopardy from the savages, hampered with diffi- 
culties, Edwards smarting under the memories 
of his Northampton parish, Hopkins unable to 
get his meagre salary, and forced on that ac- 
count to leave Great Barrington ; yet pursu- 
ing quietly and persistently those studies which 
enchained them by the recondite mysteries and 
boundless questions they unfolded, studies 
which were to make their names famous 
throughout the world. It is pathetic to read 



Established Church of Berkshire 309 

in Hopkins's autobiographic memoirs, after he 
was appointed the Hterary executor of Ed- 
wards and at Mrs. Edwards's express request 
had agreed to write the Hfe of her husband : 

" As these manuscripts were in my hands a number of 
years, I paid my chief attention to them, until I had read 
them all, which consisted of a great number of volumes, 
some of them large, besides sermons, of which sermons 
I did not read the whole. In doing this I had much 
pleasure and profit. My mind became more engaged in 
study, rising, great part of my time, at four o'clock in 
the morning to pursue my study, in which I took great 
pleasure." 

Only a little less galactic than these are the 
names of West, the minister of Stockbridge for 
fifty-nine years, longest settled of any minister 
in the history of the county, and Catlin, who 
was the minister at New Marlborough thirty- 
nine years. I have myself conversed recently 
with an aged lady in Stockbridge who remem- 
bers Dr. West, with his short clothes, silver 
buckles, hair braided down his back, and three- 
cornered hat. With this the account of Miss 
Catherine Sedgwick exactly tallies. Dr. West 
was a precisionist, an exquisite and a mighty 
theologian. Over eighty young men prepar- 
ing for the ministry read theology with him 



3IO Lenox 

and they became many of them noted preach- 
ers. His home became a sort of theoloeical 
seminary. West came into the county ten 
years before Hopkins left it; and under the 
influence of this friendship West became an 
ultra-Calvinist, and his school a foremost and 
strenuous advocate of what was known as 
Hopkinsianism. Dr. West was consulted as to 
the foundation of Andover, and was the biog- 
rapher of Hopkins. He was also chaplain at 
the Hoosac fort ; and like Allen's prayer at 
Bennington, to which the soldiers attributed 
our victory (although Allen fought as well as 
he prayed), so at the Berkshire convention 
which met at Stockbridge in the early days of 
the Revolution and resolved to "boycott" all 
goods of British manufacture. West's "ani- 
mated prayer " lingered long in the hearts of 
those early patriots of the county, which was 
one of the first to throw down that gauntlet of 
revolt. This action of the Berkshire men, not 
unworthy to be classed with the Boston Tea 
Party, was abetted and sanctioned by their 
youthful religious leaders and teachers. 

Over in New Marlborough there was, as a 
contemporary of Dr. West, though not of Hop- 
kins, a man, Jacob Catlin, whose TJicological 
Compe7idui})i, a work much prized in his day, 



Established Church of Berkshire 311 

lies before me as I write. He was a pupil of 
West, and he in turn became an instructor 
of many young men about to go into the min- 
istry. It is said of him and of Dr. Hyde that 
they almost never laughed. Dr. Catlin was 
known to laugh once, and Dr. Hyde never 
laughed loud enough to be heard in the next 
room. Catlin, owing to his small salary, car- 
ried on farming on an extensive scale, making 
worldlings envious of his success in tilling the 
soil, and yet he always found time to write 
out two sermons a week, conducted numerous 
meetings every week, and between services on 
the Sabbath carried on a sort of Bible school 
and parochial bureau of information. He was, 
like others of his brethren, an ardent lover of 
the Berkshire Association, which was a sort of 
advanced Bible class, lasting two days or so 
and devoted to spiritual and biblical exercises 
mainly. Yale gave him a D.D. 

Another minister of this period was E. Jud- 
son of the Sheffield church, who, like West, 
changed from the Arminian to an ultra-Calvin- 
istic theology, and, what is more, changed his 
church, too, for as one said : " We were made 
Calvinists before we knew it." Mr. Judson 
was himself an instructor of theological stu- 
dents, and, though eccentric, was " esteemed 



312 Lenox 

highly for his work's sake." We mention him 
here because he was the " faithful personal and 
political friend " of Thomas Allen of the church 
in Pittsfield, both of them being intense parti- 
sans of the Jeffersonian type, though Judson 
was far more adroit than Allen. The Berk- 
shire Association deeply offended Dr. Allen, 
toward the very last of his life, by sanctioning 
the new church enterprise which split off from 
the First Church owing to Allen's political ser- 
mons ; and the chronicler of Allen's funeral 
tells a volume between the lines when he says : 

" His funeral sermon was preached by his faithful 
personal political friend, the Rev. E. Judson of Shef- 
field. . . . Other clergymen who took part were 
Rev. Mr. Marsh of Bennington and a Mr. Hall, who was 
preaching as a candidate." And then the historian 
adds: " Many of the neighboring ministers were, how- 
ever, present." 

And what shall I more say. For the time 
would fail me to tell of William Allen, called 
from Pittsfield to the presidency of Bowdoin ; 
of Humphrey, called to the presidency of Am- 
herst ; of John DeWitt, long a prominent 
teacher in the New Brunswick seminary, once 
a colleague of Mr. Collins ; of John Todd and 
his thirty-one years' pastorate in Pittsfield ; 
of James Bradford and his thirty-nine years' 



Established Church of Berkshire 



o'd 



pastorate in Sheffield ; of Dr. Shepard and 
his fifty-one years' pastorate in Lenox ; of G. 
Dorrance and his thirty-nine years' pastorate 
in Windsor ; also in more recent years of 
Twining, of Hinsdale once, for many years 
on the Independent ; of Alden, formerly of 
Lenox and long-time the Secretary of the 
American Board of Foreign Missions ; of 
Harris, formerly of the South Church, Pitts- 
field, lonQT a most disting-uished teacher and 
leader at New Haven. Thirty-six ministers 
have served the churches of this county, by 
reason of their long pastorates, a grand total 
of eleven hundred years. It will be permitted 
me, perhaps, to speak specially of two minis- 
ters. Dr. Field of Stockbridge, and Dr. Shep- 
ard of Lenox. Dr. Field was the author of a 
very valuable history of Berkshire, and was no 
mean successor of West, Edwards, and Ser- 
geant, though his pastorate was not as long as 
that of others in the county. Dr. Shepard of 
Lenox, nearly fifty-one years pastor of the 
church, was not as great a theologian as West, 
with whom, as well as with Dr. Field, he was 
contemporary, yet a powerful and useful 
preacher of great ability ; blessed with fre- 
quent revivals; the very opposite of Hyde 
and Catlin in outward mien, for Shepard was 



3H Lenox 

very sociable and jolly; with a voice which 
Dr. Todd pronounced "the most wonderful 
he ever heard." He was a man of marked 
influence in the county. His remains lie in 
the churchyard near the church, like those of 
many of the older preachers, who became so 
attached to their parishes by lono- service as 
to wish interment amid the scenes of their 
labors. 

It may not be inappropriate, having viewed 
these ministers singly in their several parishes, 
if we take a look more closely into their asso- 
ciational gatherings and see them together; 
though it will be very hard to digest the con- 
tents of three leather-covered volumes into a 
paragraph. By associational vote when the 
division was made, the records and files of 
papers, etc., were ordered to be preserved and 
consigned to the care of the South Association. 
They are most carefully kept in the vaults of 
the Stockbridge bank, and with something 
like eagerness, fascination, and awe I have 
gone through these ancient records, glistening 
with the blotting sand which still adheres, 
yellowed with age, and containing autographs 
of many of these olden pastors. The Berk- 
shire Association was organized in 1763, but 
for thirty years the records were not kept ; or 



Established Church of Berkshire 3^5 

if kept, were lost. It was organized with the 
following personnel : The Revs. Jonathan 
Hubbard of Shef^eld, Thomas Strong of New 
Marlborough, A. Bidwell of Tyringham, Sam- 
uel Hopkins of Great Barrington, and Stephen 
West. Meetings were held three times a 
year, and as the number of ministers grew 
we find for a series of years only two meetings 
a year ; but it must be remembered that the 
ministers of neighboring parishes used to have 
meetings once a month ; certainly in the vicin- 
ity of New Marlborough in Dr. Catlin's time. 

The regular meetings of the Association 
were almost always two-day affairs, and scat- 
tered through the records for twoscore years 
are many such notes as this : "Adjourned un- 
til 5 o'c. to-morrow morning"; almost always 
" 5 o'c," sometimes " 7 o'c," and once till sun 
" is ^ hour high." The place of meeting varied 
and the exercises were the same for many, 
many years : namely, public service with ser- 
mon, afterward criticised, discussion of some 
question of theology, a study of the Bible in 
course, question box on questions of disci- 
pline, experience and polity, and business — 
coupled with anniversary meetings of various 
county societies. The Association was a sort 
of appellate court for the churches, and was 



3i6 Lenox 

almost always busy examining and licensing 
candidates. It had in after years a regular 
yearly narrative of the state of the churches. 
It was foremost in helping various causes, 
often initiating them : Bible, temperance, Sab- 
bath observance, Sunday-school, and anti-slav- 
ery. It made recommendations and issued 
pastoral letters to the churches. It assigned 
pastoral visits to the churches, making out 
schedules for ministers to go by twos to vari- 
ous parishes, for pastoral and preaching work. 
It employed itinerant missionaries for the 
weak and feeble churches. It inaugurated 
conferences or fellowship meetings. It ap- 
pointed many days of fasting and prayer for 
spiritual refreshment. It was executive, stu- 
dious, spiritual, and it compelled attendance 
of members by exacting excuses for absentee- 
ism before the whole body. 

Many interesting minutes could be brought 
to view from the old records, as they show 
the state of thought and feelinor amono- the 
" watchmen on the hills of Zion " regarding 
the various questions which swept, like cloud 
shadows, across these vales and hills. The 
change in relation to connection between 
Churchand State, exempting non-communicants 
of one order from taxation, — in short the dis- 



Established Church of Berkshire 3 ^ 7 

establishment of Congregationalism, — the work 
of missions among the heathen, the temper- 
ance cause, the anti-slavery movement— all 
these questions in the ethical realm, and those 
in the civil realm from the Revolution down 
show a state of mind, as revealed by these 
minutes, at once noble and far-seeing. I think 
one of the remarkable things is the sudden- 
ness and thoroughness of the temperance 
reformation in the county. Let it be remem- 
bered that drinking was universal, the sin only 
lying in excess : that Dr. Shepard and Dr. 
West and good and holy deacons and many 
of the rank and file were users of liquor ; that 
the Hinsdale pews were sold to the accom- 
paniment of the glass that cheers and inebri- 
ates ; that the Sheffield church-raising had a 
town appropriation of "three barrels of beer 
and twenty gallons of rum" with which to put 
up its sacred timbers; that in Gordon Dor- 
rance's ministry of thirty-nine years up in 
Windsor the only records are of about thirty 
church meetings or so, twenty-five of which 
are of discipline for drunkenness ; that every 
sideboard had its decanter and ministers were 
accustomed to quaff a social glass at the pas- 
toral calls ; and then think of the thorough- 
going character of that reformation which, 



3i8 Lenox 

through the examples of these ministers largely, 
was wrought in the county. Our fathers 
handled with dexterity the flip-iron which has 
entirely gone out of our knowledge with the 
crane and the pillion ; yet that flip-iron was 
the symbol of our shame. I find many a 
minute as to temperance on these pages. The 
first that I discover is of date June lo, 1828, 
and reads : " The report upon the subject of 
temperance, pledging entire abstinence on our 
own part and recommending the same to all 
others, was accepted and ordered to be 
printed." Seven years later (1835) the pledge 
is renewed and recommended again. In 1851 
this minute appears: "In some of our com- 
munities no liquor is sold openly and in one 
none is openly drank, nor can a drunkard be 
found." It is but fair, however, to state that 
the hold of strong drink was not so relaxed 
that every community was a unit in this mat- 
ter. Lieutenant-Governor Hull of Sandisfield, 
writes in 1854 : " The male portion of our cus- 
tomers, including the aged minister, indulged 
liberally in the rations of strong drink." The 
minister here referred to purchased his liquor 
by the quart, and rejoiced in many a gracious 
season of revival, too. 

The impression, I am quite sure, obtains 



Established Church of Berkshire 319 

that someway the reHiTious life of the fathers 
and of the time in which they lived was of a 
higher order than now. An impression of 
that sort does honor to our affection, but is 
not, I venture to think, quite in accord with 
the facts ; at least if we may judge from what 
our fathers themselves said concerning the 
life and morals of their own age. Their 
sermons are full of the bitterest arraignment 
of the world in which they lived ; its degen- 
eracy, its lapse, its trend. We have lauded 
" the good old times " too much ; though I 
doubt not they were better than their records 
and sermons make them out. Read Dr. 
Hopkins's sermon entitled " The author's fare- 
well to the world," preached just before his 
death in 1803 — two or three years before, 
at the turn of the centuries ; it breathes de- 
nunciation in every line, and seems to be 
modelled after the most fiery invective of the 
minor prophets. Read the magazines of the 
period. The Panoplist and The Evangelic 
Magazine, published in the first decade of the 
nineteenth century ; Dr. Catlin's sermon on 
a fast-day in 181 2, and the " Records " of the 
churches themselves. See the world of our 
fathers' day through the eyes of our fathers 
as revealed in their sermons and letters, and 



3^0 Lenox 

our affection will not usurp the place of our 
judgment. The world is improving, like good 
wine, with age. We live in better days than 
our fathers ; and our sons will no doubt keep 
up the pleasant fiction that ours is the Golden 
Age, and theirs the Age of Stone ; and so on 
and on, while time lasts and God works out 
His purposes despite human unbelief. 

I wish to pass, then, directly into the sub- 
ject which in the most signal way marks the 
difference between the age of our fathers 
and ours ; viz., the theology of a hundred 
years ago, and less, contrasted with the belief 
in the churches to-day. I think few of us 
would be willing to assent to what Macaulay 
says about theology, — " that it is not a pro- 
gressive science like pharmacy, geology, or 
navigation ; and a Christian of the nineteenth 
century is no better or worse off than a Chris- 
tian of the fifth, providing each is possessed 
of candor, for both alike have the Bible in 
their hands." The greatest progress imagina- 
ble is seen in the way people conceived of 
truth during this last century, and I pray for 
that wisdom in treating this subject which 
Lowell says Emerson had, "who took down 
our idols with so much grace that it seemed 
an act of worship." Let us come right to 



Established Church of Berkshire 321 

what the fathers taught ahout God, man, and 
destiny. 

They taught that God hated sinful man, 
that man was only vile in His sight, and that 
the body as well as the soul of the sinner 
would burn in real fire endlessly. Dr. Hop- 
kins begins his System of Dtvmity, published 
in 1 793, as follows : 

" Mankind needs to know the method God has ap- 
pointed in which He zvill be reconciled to them " ; 
and a little farther on we read, " this displeasure, anger, 
and wrath of God toward the sinner is just, benevo- 
lent, and kind " ; and I quote again : " He who has 
a new heart must be a friend of God and must be 
pleased with His infinitely benevolent character, though 
he has not a thought that God loves him ; and if 
he could know that God designed, for His own glory 
and the general good, to cast him into endless destruc- 
tion, this would not make him cease to approve of His 
character : he would continue to be a friend of God." 

What would Dr. Hopkins have said if he 
could have known that the Church a hundred 
years from his time would be singing : 

" O Love Divine that stooped to share 
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear," 

and that we would be throwing all the weight 
of our emphasis on the great cardinal doctrine 



322 Lenox 

of God's love as a means to awaken loyalty 
and service among men ? 

To-day the reconciliation of man to God 
has taken the place of the reconciliation of 
God to men. I know a lady — she is still 
living — who has told me how when she 
joined the Church, somewhere about 1833, 
the minister asked her, " Theresa, are you 
willing to be damned for the glory of God ? " 
and she said, " No, sir." Even Mrs. Edwards, 
the wife of the distinguished Stockbridge 
preacher of old time, reluctantly yet eagerly 
accepted the idea of God's Fatherhood as a 
new revelation to her soul, when the prevalent 
doctrine was that he was a Sovereign, a "hard 
and austere Master," an offended and un- 
reconciled Deity having a sort of consuming 
hatred for the human race ; and all because 
throuoh one man came sin. 

And now look at the picture of that " first 
sin " in Eden, and the consequences of it as 
pictured upon the olden page ; and not so very 
long ago, either, for this teaching of a hundred 
years ago comes way down well into the second 
quarter of this last century. It is incredible that 
we are only just emerging from the shadows. 
The creation of the world in six literal days, 
and, as Dr. Catlin, in an old manuscript ser- 



Established Church of Berkshire 323 

inon lying before me says, of man " on Satur- 
day at sundown " ; the bringing of the universe 
into shape in 144 hours, a mighty, instantane- 
ous work of the great Demiurge, with angels 
looking on and singing as on the first day they 
saw Europe, Asia, Africa, and America rise 
out of the waters, and all this *' at the autumnal 
equinox" (see Hopkins, System of Divinity, p. 
233) ; the Paradise of our first parents, in 
which, before their sin, serpents walked, for 
Dr. Hopkins takes pains to tell us that the 
serpent who tempted Eve " had an erect and 
very beautiful form, and had nothing of the 
appearance and form of serpents since the fall 
of man," and Dr. Catlin says of the serpent, 
"he walked erect with gj^eat vivacity, and was 
the most lovely and beautiful of all the brutal 
creation, until he was doomed after the fall of 
man to go upon his belly and lick the dust of 
the earth " ; and finally the sin of Eden with 
the " revelation of the plan of mercy immedi- 
ately after the fall of man, so that doubtless 
Adam and Eve embraced the Saviour and the 
plan of redemption by his blood " ; — how primi- 
tive all this appears to us ! We wonder that 
only yesterday, so to speak, we believed all 
this. 

Yet this theory of the creation and fall of 



324 Lenox 

man is only trivial compared with the erro- 
neous and mischievous doctrines built upon it. 
"Total depravity" followed, then original sin, 
and the doctrines of the " Decrees," by which 
God was said to damn some in infancy. Dr. 
Catlin speaks of the " universal sinfulness of 
infants " : " infants are in a lost and perishing 
condition " ; and farther on he proceeds to 
clinch the argument by this same doctrine of 
" original and innate depravity " due to Adam's 
sin. Is it any wonder that the fathers com- 
plain of " deadness and unbelief" in their 
churches, particularly when they made the ac- 
ceptance of these doctrines a condition of 
salvation ? Every mother bending over her 
sweetly sleeping babe in the cradle ought to 
have taken counsel of her heart and refused to 
listen to such counsel from these pseudo-in- 
terpreters of the Divine grace and nature. 
But this was only the beginning, the first step 
in carrying out the doctrine of " total de- 
pravity." Man was hated of God, vile, and so 
despicable in God's eyes that those who were 
"impenitent and unconverted" could do noth- 
ing good : " all their deeds of justice, of mercy 
and charity, are perfectly odioiis in the sight of 
a holy God" (see Catlin, Compendium, p. 195). 
" Sinners in many duties are constant and per- 



Established Church of Berkshire 325 

severing : the external duties of religion, for 
example ; the devotions of the sanctuary, read- 
ing of Scriptures, attending the Gospel min- 
istry, meetings for prayer, and so on ; they 
embrace and defend the doctrines of the Bible ; 
even engage in family worship and the relig- 
ious training of their children, well knowing 
these things are of infinite importance to their 
children, but all these external duties and sacri- 
fices of the wicked are an abomination to the 
Lord"; yet they "must not renounce the ex- 
ternals of religion, lest they become barbari- 
ans." " A sinner ought to pray, but his prayer 
is an abomination unto the Lord " ; whatever 
good he does " is sin " / yet he must not omit 
doing good, even if it be " perfectly odious in 
the sight of a holy God." 

Now it is very evident that this conception 
of man which our fathers entertained would 
lead to a doctrine of " conversion " which 
would be little less than awful. What it was 
many of us remember, or have heard. In 
some instances men were weeks and months 
in the grip of melancholia until they could get 
an overwhelming sense of their guilt and ap- 
prove God's wrath ; and this was encouraged. 
It was a trophy of true conversion to be able 
to have some shnddering experience to relate, 



326 Lenox 

and the magazines of the day are filled with 
these accouncs. Every man's sin was a sin 
ao-ainst an infinite God and therefore an infinite 
sin, no matter how small it was ; and because 
it was an infinite sin demanded endless pun- 
ishment. God was angry with men, and if 
He were to forgive He must have infinite satis- 
faction for His wrath ; and so He appeased 
His wrath as He watched the sufferings and 
blood of Calvary, His vengeance demanded 
blood, and so Jesus turns away wrath, vindicates 
broken law, and the sinner gets off. 

In the former days everything, incarnation, 
atonement, conversion, regeneration, must be 
worked out by a sort of primal conception 
that man was not loved by God, that on the 
contrary he was the one object on which the 
hate of God was focussed. And the wonder 
is how men read the Parable of the Prodigal 
Son, for example. It seems as if they must 
have stifled all their nobler feelings as in- 
terpreters of God ; indeed they did do just 
that. One minister, living in West Stock- 
bridge, the Rev. Mr. Camp, did venture to 
deny that man was so bad as the prevailing 
theology made him out, but he was " labored 
with," then suspended ; and finally he " re- 
tracted," The "plan" was inexorable. To 



Established Church of Berkshire 327 

disbelieve the ruling creed was to invite ex- 
communication ; and Hopkins expressly de- 
clares that the Church must treat the man 
thus cut off " with peculiar neglect and slight, 
avoid his company at all times, and never so 
much as eat with him at a common table." 
The story of John Ward, Preacher, is sober 
realism. And as if that were not enough Dr. 
Hopkins consigns all those who differ with 
him to endless destruction ; and what he 
means by hell is real fire as well as the bitter 
anguish of remorse. I quote : 

" God will render a future separation of the bodies and 
the souls of the wicked impossible, and so form the 
body, as that it shall continue xw full life, and with quick 
sense in union with the soul, in the hottest fire that can 
be imagined, or exist, through endless ages. . . . God 
will show his power in the punishment of the wicked by 
strengthening and upholding their bodies and souls in suf- 
fering torments which otherwise would be intolerable.' 
{System of Divinity, vol. 2, p. 253). 

And this, he taught, was what all must come 
to who did n't hold the faith as he taught it, 
no matter how excellent and exceptionally 
moral their lives! To-day not only his doc- 
trine of a physical hell, but an endless hell as 
well, is repulsive to the Christian conscious- 
ness ; and is cast off. 



328 Lenox 

I cannot dwell on our fathers' emphasis of 
the " Decrees of God " ; of election and pret- 
ention ; of the sovereignty of the great God, 
who disposed all events in the arbitrary way 
by which His glory would be best subserved ; 
or of the doctrine of the perseverance of the 
saints ; but one can but do these spiritual 
teachers honor for their extreme humility in 
rather timidly " entertaining a hope," only, of 
their salvation. Their stern doctrines smote 
them with godly fear and humbleness of mind. 
There never was a godlier race ; sure they 
were right, yet never sure they themselves 
were saved, though we know they had an 
" abundant entrance " ministered to them as 
they " crossed the bar " into the beatific har- 
bors. I cannot dwell here on their concep- 
tion of Jesus Christ, whom they robbed of his 
humanity, making him forbidding in his holi- 
ness, a Deity on earth in whom temptation 
found no response, a Teacher of an impossible 
human goodness, a Being more in league with 
heaven than in sympathy with mortals ; but 
who can withhold from our fathers their just 
meed of praise for the Christ-spirit they so 
largely expressed.? If they regarded a Sab- 
bath-breaker as worse than an adulterer or 
murderer — and they did (see Catlin, p. 217) ; 



Established Church of Berkshire 329 

if the " Records of these Churches " are filled 
with quarrels and trials ; I think we do wrong 
not to see how noble a motive often animated 
their sternness toward their fellow-men, viz., 
to save their souls from the inevitable and 
terrific fate, unmodified, unceasing, awaiting 
the wrong-doer, — and this, no matter how 
mistaken we see it to be now, was the Christ- 
spirit. I cannot dwell now on their concep- 
tion of the work of " Foreicrn Missions," of 
which they thought as saving the heathen 
from an impending fate because they did not 
know of Christ — a work they prosecuted as 
life-savers the rescue of men from conflagra- 
tion or shipwreck, because they felt no heathen 
could be saved without personally knowing 
Him of whom they had never even heard ! But 
shall we see the mistake in their idea of " For- 
eign Missions " and not see their motive, the 
sublimity of their hope and sacrifices in estab- 
lishing a work so momentous, so magnificent, 
so lasting? If they reasoned out "Trinity" 
on the basis of a text not in the Revision, — 
" There are three that bare record," which 
Hopkins makes an " express declaration " of 
the doctrine, and Catlin says " states the mat- 
ter very clearly," — we may smile but we do 
not therefore read out the term " Trinity " 



OJ^ 



Lenox 



from our modern theology, though we put an 
altotrether different meaninof into it. And 
who can read this passage from Hopkins 
without honoring his simple reading of the 
Scripture : 

" The spirits of departed saints when they leave the 
body do not go into some dark corner of the universe, 
or out of sight of heaven, of Christ, his Church, and this 
world, but they rise into light and take a station from 
which they can see all these things and all worlds, and 
have a perfect discerning without the least cloud or 
darkness." (Hopkins, vol. 2, p. 223.) 

Of course our fathers believed in the resurrec- 
tion of the body — now pretty generally given 
up ; and I think this passage from Hopkins's 
" Farewell to the World " is rather a unique 
expression of the former belief concerning the 
" Last Judgment" : " I am sure to meet not 
only all who are now in the world, but all the 
countless millions who ever have lived, or 
shall exist hereafter to the end of the world at 
the day of judgment, zuhcn I shall knoiu the 
character of every i7idividual person " {Ser- 
mons, p. 358). Dear, dear! And as if it were 
not enough to picture in so realistic a way 
that " Day of Wrath," and frame a mighty 
philosophy of human belief, conduct, and des- 



Established Church of Berkshire 331 

tiny, Dr. Hopkins plays the seer, and says 
that 

" the sixth vial is now running and began to be poured 
out at the beginning of the eighteenth century, or some 
years before, and will run some part of the nineteenth 
century, perhaps near fifty years of it. . . . And 
then the ' seventh and last vial,' the most dreadful calam- 
ities and destructions will be poured out, ushering in 
the millennium." 

Nine pages of Dr. Hopkins's System (vol. 2, p. 
290-299) are filled to prove that the Sabbath 
begins at sundown ; one of his sermons is de- 
voted — the one entitled his " valedictory " — to 
a general wail and denunciation, in which the 
only thing which has any vein of cheerfulness 
to his mind is this, that God will make his 
(Hopkins's) system of thought to stand : " I 
stand as a brazen wall, unhurt and not moved 
by all the shafts of opposition and reproach 
which have been levelled at me, and at the 
system of truth and religion I have espoused, 
being assured it will stand for ever T 

Scarce a hundred years have elapsed, and 
lo ! we look to-day upon the ruins of that 
system known in religious thought as " Hop- 
kinsianism." Its author, he himself tells us, 
was regarded as " narrow and bigoted in his 
sentiments." The Berkshire ministry of to-day 



2)2>^ Lenox 

has broken away from his dogmatic chains, 
yet it reverences Hopkins as a man and as a 
reformer, but not as a teacher of truth. The 
cathoHc and broad spirit began to overspread 
the face of thing^s soon after he died, cominof 
to us from Coleridofe, not to eo farther back, 
then through Maurice, Robertson, Tennyson, 
and Brownino- on the other side, and througrh 
Channing, Bushnell, Beecher, and Munger on 
this side ; the great law of evolution and the 
origin of species through Darwin, Spencer, 
and Huxley found place in human thought ; 
the telegraph made all the world one, and so 
broadened our horizons ; education has cleared 
away the cobwebs from our seeing ; and above 
and beyond everything else the spirit of God 
has been brooding quietly over the mind and 
heart of man ; and so it is not in the power 
of any old system of truth to hold us. That 
power to hold lies in Truth, not in a system 
of truth, and Truth is of God, a " system " is 
of men, Hopkins's system contained a great 
deal of sublime truth that will remain ; but its 
reactionary Calvinism was its main feature, 
and this has been sloughed off. 

Sergeant, Edwards, Hopkins, Catlin, Allen, 
Judson, Shepard, West, Hyde, Humphrey, 
Field — I am sure as I speak the names, they 



Established Church of Berkshire 333 

evoke a response from our hearts, prompt, 
grateful, and enduring, and more thrilling than 
the name of many a hero of Jewish and 
sacred story. Through faith they came into 
this Berkshire wilderness, and pioneered ; 
through faith they taught the Mohican In- 
dians they found here, and for fifty years 
gave these friendly savages a practical Chris- 
tian education ; through faith in knowledge 
they, all college men and by a very large 
majority from Yale, reared here their monu- 
ment, Williams College, their creation, their 
care, and the loved object of their sacrifices, 
when to sacrifice was to yield almost their 
very life-blood ; through faith they planted 
churches, and cared for them in long and 
happy and useful pastorates ; through faith 
in their country's cause they offered them- 
selves on the altar of sacrifice in the nation's 
peril, Avery of Windsor leading a Berkshire 
regiment to Boston after the news of Lex- 
ington came by fast couriers to the county, 
and Allen leading another to Bennington 
where the " fighting parson " shot as well as 
prayed and ministered to the dying ; through 
faith they broke the rocks and felled the 
trees and tilled the soil, many of them toilers 
with their hands ; through faith they carried 



334 Lenox 

on in their corporate capacity the vast inter- 
ests of this region so far as concerned rehgion, 
morals, missions, education ; through faith 
they wrought wonders, preached the truth as 
they conceived it, hved pattern hves full of 
the spirit of their Master and Lord, minis- 
tered to the needy, and saw their work often 
mightily prosper. And these all, having " wit- 
nessed a good confession," died as they had 
lived ; and just outside the door of how many 
a village church in this county, or in the 
quiet cemetery not far away, is the precious 
dust of these venerated fathers, their graves 
the sacred shrines of the children and great- 
grandchildren of those to whom they minis- 
tered. Dr. Shepard's grave at Lenox is 
hardly a step from the church-door he so 
often entered, and almost on the exact spot 
where, as a mere boy, he was inducted into 
the sacred office of pastor, at a memorable 
open-air service in 1795. And here is the 
inscription on a stone in a quiet corner of the 
Stockbridge cemetery : 

" Here lyes 
the Body of the Rev. Mr. Jolin Sergeant 
who dyed the 27th Day of July A. D. 1749 
in the fortieth year of his age. 



Established Church of Berkshire 335 

Where is that pleasing form I ask ? I'liou canst not show. 
He 's not within false stone there 's nought but dust 

below. 
And where is that pious soul, that thinking, conscious 

mind ? 
Wilt thou pretend vain cypher that 's with thee in- 
shrined ? 
Alas my friends, not here with thee, that I can find, 
Here 's not a Sergeant's body, nor a Sergeant's mind, 
I '11 seek him hence, for all 's alike deception here, 
I '11 go to Heaven and shall find my Sergeant there." 

I want if I can to bring up one or two of 
these men, and get a look at them in flesh 
and blood. Miss Sedgrwick in her tales and 
sketches has left us many a portrait of Stephen 
West, who was just finishing his pastorate at 
Stockbridge as she was reaching the thresh- 
hold of her literary career ; and it may not be 
amiss to notice that what often and often has 
happened, happened here. We would not have 
had MissCatherine Sedgwick's charming stories 
arraigning the awful, the dry and barren theol- 
ogy of her day if there had been no theology to 
arraiofn. It was the teachincr of West and 
Shepard — the one the pastor in the home of 
Catherine's girlhood, Stockbridge ; and the 
other in the home of her womanhood, Lenox 
— and of such as they that gave us A New 
England Tale, which in its day was almost as 



33^ Lenox 

popular as Uncle Toms Cabin In its day, or as 
Ben Hur in ours. And yet Miss Sedgwick 
loved Dr. West as a man, for he was vastly 
better than his system, for she says, "beneath 
a stern and precise exterior, he was social, 
tender, cheerful, with a disposition like sun- 
shine, warm and genial." Every morning he 
greeted each member of his family with "good 
morning prefaced with a broad sunny smile." 
He was an eminent theologian, having always 
in his household some student to educate for 
the ministry ; a very pious, rigorously precise, 
man; an indefatigable student; rigidly Hop- 
kinsian in his theology ; and a man of tremen- 
dous influence. And yet I am bound to say 
that I think he rather " lorded it over God's 
heritage." A widow who was a member of 
his church married an immoral, unchristian 
man, and was excommunicated ; a council was 
called, but Dr. West, then a man of forty, de- 
fended his action in a published sermon I 
have just read on " The duty of Christians to 
marry only in the Lord." The arguments are 
not worth consideration to-day ; though doubt- 
less in their day were plausible with many 
because the skilful advocate tried to bring the 
Scriptures to his defence. 

But let me call up before you two other men : 



Established Church of Berkshire z?)7 

Dr. CatHn of New Marlborough, the author of 
a popular work on theology ; and Mr. Collins 
of Lanesborough, — both Yale men. Here is 
the way Dr. Catlin is described : " Of medium 
height, not fleshy but strongly made ; of grave, 
manly countenance, and a kindly bow of the 
olden time for all whom he met. Dressed 
always in black ; short clothes buckled at the 
knee ; a white stock buckled behind ; hat 
turned up at side and behind." It is said that 
he never laughed but once in his lifetime. One 
likes to imagine what that one joke could 
have been. Mr. Collins is thus pictured : 
" Tall, erect, quick in his movements, and 
wore to the close of his life the ministerial 
wig and three-cornered hat. He expected and 
exacted a bow from every child he met." It 
may be remarked in passing that Mr. Collins 
as a loyalist was profoundly incensed at his 
neighbor, Mr. Allen of Pittsfield, the "fight- 
ing parson," the intense patriot, and a Demo- 
crat of the Democrats, all the rest of his 
ministerial brethren being Federalists but one, 
Judson of Sheffield. Mr. Collins, however, 
took it upon himself to be so severe on " Par- 
son " Allen, that the town of Pittsfield voted 
to ask Mr. Collins to desist from his course of 
" censuring and disapproving their reverend 



33^ Lenox 

pastor " ; and indeed his own town of Lanes- 
borough condemned him for his Tory senti- 
ments. 

Let us take another couple of these olden 
ministers, Shepard of Lenox, and Hyde of 
Lee, — exact opposites : — Hyde, a reactionary 
orthodox ; Shepard, orthodox, very, but pro- 
gressive : Hyde, a man of sad and serious 
demeanor, never laughing, or if he did once in 
a great while, never loud enough to be heard 
in the next room ; Shepard, a teller of funny 
stories and always jolly, though he knew when 
to be dignified : Hyde, a man to whom Dr. 
Backus once said, " You never have anything 
to repent of"; Shepard doing, I presume, a 
hundred things a day he felt sorry for : Hyde, 
a close, quiet manuscript preacher with almost 
no gestures, and Shepard an extemporaneous, 
vehement one, though both preached to a 
churchful : one having a ministry of forty 
years and a few months in Lee, and the other 
fifty years and a few months in the county 
seat, preaching to lawyers, students and faculty, 
and his own distinguished and cultured parish- 
ioners. Or, take another two, Allen of 
Pittsfield, and Judson of Sheffield, both the 
intensest kind of J effersonian Democrats, 
when their brother-ministers were regarding 




The Rev. Scujiitel Shepard, D.D., 

Pastor Congregational Church, Lenox, Mass. [i'/g§-i<S46.] 



Established Church of Berkshire 339 

Thomas Jefferson as anti-Christ, the enemy of 
rehgion, and the defamer of God and ah that 
was good. Yet even Allen and Judson differed 
markedly in the emphasis they laid on their 
political convictions in public. Judson, as 
intense a Democrat as Allen, never mentioned 
his politics even in conversation, except at 
home or among congenial partisans who 
thought as he did. Allen took the stump in 
exciting periods of great public questions ; 
finally rent his own church in twain, and when 
he died the other ministers were a little scant 
in courtesy to his memory. He had a pleas- 
ant, affectionate countenance, which took on a 
most benignant expression in the pulpit. He 
read his sermons from manuscript in short- 
hand, having himself devised his own system 
of stenography. 

To Sergeant, Hopkins and Edwards, all 
Yale men, I have already sufficiently referred. 
Sergeant lives on the pages of the great 
missionary record of all time. Hopkins and 
Edwards rank with the Augustines and Cal- 
vins of the Christian Church in all ages. Of 
Dr. Heman Humphrey of Pittsfield, or of Dn 
David Dudley Field, two other Yale men, 
only passing mention can be made : — the first, 
one of the best known of college presidents 



340 Lenox 

(president of Amherst College 1823-45); and 
the second, the historian of Berkshire and 
the father of a most remarkable family, dis- 
tinguished alike in American jurisprudence, 
science, and letters, — Stephen, long-time a jus- 
tice on the bench of the United States Supreme 
Court; David Dudley, Jr., an authority on 
international law and a most effective advocate; 
Cyrus W., whose name will be imperishably 
associated with the Atlantic cable; and Henry 
M., minister, editor, and traveller, whose books 
are widely read. The Rev. Dr. Henry M. 
Field is now passing the evening of his days 
in his beloved Stockbridge. 

The Congregational Church was disestab- 
lished throughout Massachusetts in 1834, up 
to which time all citizens were supposed to be 
taxed for its support, unless they had " certifi- 
cated," i. e., obtained permission from the 
proper town authorities to attend worship 
elsewhere by certifying their preference for 
other religious denominations. Some availed 
themselves of this privilege to escape the rigors 
of the dominant theology ; more to escape 
taxation for the support of the local church ; 
and thus other churches than the Congre- 
gational, with splendid histories and increasing 
efficiency, came into existence on New England 



Established Church of Berkshire 341 

soil. My space avails not to write of them 
though the lustre of brilliant achievement 
crowns their efforts and brightens the daily 
living of all. I have written of one Church 
only, because the thread of its working is a 
very distinct and integral strand in the fabric 
of state in the days when the Congregational 
was the established Church of New England ; 
and I have confined myself to the workings of 
that Church in Berkshire. 




IX 



EPITAPHS IN BERKSHIRE CHURCH- 
YARDS 



1 CANNOT quite say with Whittier, at least 
so far as Berkshire is concerned, that "our 
fathers set apart to Death the dreariest spot 
in all the land." The Lenox Cemetery has the 
choicest landscapes, evoking the admiring gaze 
of thousands who annually visit it simply for 
its magnificent scenery. It lies on the summit 
of the hill adjacent to the old church, and its 
long-time pastor, Dr. Shepard, who minis- 
tered here for half a century, is buried just 
outside the door. It is only fair to say, how- 
ever, that to test the truthfulness of the poet's 
description we need to divest this exalted and 
celebrated burial-place of its modern features, 
and see it as it was before "summer-places" 
grew up around it ; a " lonesome acre," doubt- 
less, dreary and bleak. If to-day then these 

342 



Berkshire Epitaphs 343 

ancient burying-grounds have an inviting ap- 
pearance, it is unquestionably attributable 
quite as much to a change of belief concerning 
death as to a change of sentiment concerning 
the adornment of cemeteries. The grim and 
gloomy grip of a stern theology has left its 
palpable impress on the moss-grown slabs ; 
the sheer and downright contradiction to the 
" larger hope " of the present. Betwixt the 
theology of Watts a*iid that of Whittier is 
fixed a deep gulf ; from Edwards and Hop- 
kins to Bushnell and Munger is a transition 
from the tomb into the livinor realities of a 
beautiful May morning. 

It will be impossible for me to present with 
any completeness the quaint epitaphs in Berk- 
shire churchyards ; I must confine myself to 
types. I may say by way of preface that I 
do not think so rich a "find" is to be ex- 
pected in Berkshire as in the older portions of 
the State. Still the age of epitaph-making 
had not passed away, and the " grave and the 
gay," the hortatory and the laudatory, the 
sentimental and the practical, the despairing 
and the hopeful, the sincere and the hypocriti- 
cal are all here. I regret that in the limits of 
this short chapter I shall only be able to present 
typical specimens, but I shall be abundantly 



344 Lenox 

satisfied if I can induce any to turn aside from 
their excursions here and there through the 
county in order to decipher the memorials of 
another age. 

" For thus our fathers testified, — 
That he might read who ran, — 
The emptiness of human pride, 
The nothingness of man. 

*' They dared not plant the grave with flowers. 
Nor dress the funeral sod. 
Where, with a love as deep as ours. 
They left their dead with God." 

To begin, then, with some of those com- 
monplaces which show the poverty of intellec- 
tuality, the Berkshire burying-grounds have 
their full share of those crude jingles designed 
to remind the beholder of his mortality. They 
are to be found throughout the whole region, 
such as : 

" Behold, my friends, as you pass by. 
This stone informs you where I lie ; 
As I am now soon you must be. 
Prepare to die and follow me." 



or this 



" Friends, nor [^/V] physicians could not save 
This mortal body from the grave, 
Nor can the grave confine me here, 
When Jesus calls I must appear." 



Berkshire Epitaphs 345 

or this : 

" Nor sex nor age can death defy; 
Think, mortal, what it is to die." 

These are the common epitaphs, often asso- 
ciated with winged angels' heads and draped 
urns sculptured on the stone, perhaps now and 
then having, in addition, the motto " Nascen- 
tes Morimur," to intensify the depressing sen- 
timent in the vernacular. 

Here are two epitaphs to babies, the first a 
babe of nine hours, who died 1799 : 

" Ye active babes and children all ! 
Behold the scene of children's fall, 
My day was short, my hours few. 
And bid this world and all adieu " ; 

and this, from another burying-ground, reveal- 
ing a resignation hard and unnatural : 

" Happy the babe who privileged by fate 
To shorten labor, and a lighter weight. 
Received but yesterday the gift of breath, 
Ordered to-morrow to return to death." 

It is comforting to read as a firm dissent 
from the theology of the times, when, by the 
" decree " of preterltion, it was asserted that 
"hell was paved with the skulls of infants not 
a span long," this mother's assurance, engraved 
on another stone in a Berkshire churchyard : 



346 Lenox 

" I know my babe is blest." 

Rash woman she to defy the " doctors in the 
temple" and court the charge of heresy from 
her friends and neighbors. OHver Wendell 
Holm.es says Jonathan Edwards must have 
read that invitation of Jesus to children, " Suf- 
fer the little vipers to come unto me, and for- 
bid them not," and I feel very sure so triumphant 
an exclamation as this parent's was not suffered 
to pass unchallenged. 

A death in youth or in middle life or from ac- 
cident was an opportunity not to be lost, and 
many are the stones which narrate in compact 
detail the actual circumstances by which the 
deceased lost his life, with sundry moral reflec- 
tions based on the same. Sometimes one sees 
on the Berkshire roads the very spot on which 
a fatal accident occurred marked by a stone. 
Here is one on the road from Lenox to Lee : 

" On this spot was found the lifeless corpse of 
Mr. D. Blossom of Lenox, May 8, 1814, in the 
22d year of his age. Walking here he was sud- 
denly called into eternity without any earthly 
friend to console him in his last moment or to 
close his dying eyes. Reader, pause and con- 
sider the vast importance of being prepared to 
meet thy God. For thou knowest not the 
time, the place, nor the manner of thy death." 



Berkshire Epitaphs 347 

Here is another inscription on the slab to the 
memory of a man in middle life : 

" Repent, repent now you have time 
For I was taken in my prime." 

And here is this rather unexpected philosophy 
from the lips of a youth who died 1791 : 

" In the twenty-third year of my age 
I quit this tirsom {_su] pilgrimage." 

Bad spelling, omitted letters and words in- 
dicated by carets, and non-syllabic division of 
words at the ends of lines are to be found in 
all the Berkshire churchyards, but how far 
these things reflect on the average educational 
standards of the age and how far on the gen- 
eral schooling of the stone-cutters alone cannot 
be entirely determined from these epitaphs. 

Here is one (1796) : 

" Cum all you living that me survive 
Unto these lines attend 
Walk in the paths of piece and truth 
And piece shall be your end." 

Here is another (1798) : 

" O may this be your happy case 
That he who gives you length of days 
May raise you to his corts above 
There to pertake of boundless love." 



34^ Lenox 

The romance of the Berkshire epitaphs is a 
story all by itself. I give one. It is the 
lament of a young widow : 

" Hervey with thee I 'd walk the narrow road 
That leads far hence to yonder blest abode. 
Grant me his faith, O Lord our God most high, 
Let me like Hervey live, like Hervey die! " 

Often as I have gone reverently yet curi- 
ously among the mounds and ancient slabs of 
these burying-grounds a sense of life has 
seized me, their life, their living sorrows, trials, 
loves, and hates. 

'' Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 

Their furrow oft the stul)born glebe has broke; 
How jocund did they drive their team a-field ! 

How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! " 

Here are simply " annals," as the classic ele- 
giac calls them, but a life-story is " between 
the lines," always full of interest, sometimes 
surcharged with romance. Humanity with 
its needs, its aspirations, its jealousies, its 
strivings, its purposes and aims is the same 
from age to age. 

I found this epitaph in one of the Berkshire 
cemeteries : 

" Her thinkings and achings are o' er." 



Berkshire Epitaphs 349 

Yes ! it is life which is here, which is here 
annalled. We ah remember that poem of 
Whittier's on " Forgiveness," in which the 
poet describes himself as having been once 
very greatly wronged and was able to forgive, 
as wandering one day in the village burial- 
place he pondered 



. . . how all human love and hate 

Find one sad level, and how soon or late 

Wronged and wrong-doer 

Pass the green threshold of our common grave; 

Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave, 

Swept all my pride away and trembling \ forgave." 



The humor of the burying-grounds in Berk- 
shire may also be had for the seeking. One 
or two instances must suffice ; and first of all 
as I was threading my way through the Lanes- 
borough Cemetery one day my eye caught in 
large letters on a sarcophagus up the slope 
a name familiar to every American house- 
hold : "Josh Billings." On another side of 
the stone was the real name of the quaint 
humorist, "Henry Wheeler Shaw, b. 1818, 

d. 1885." 

Here is an epitaph taken from one of the 
stones in eastern Berkshire : 



35^ Lenox 

" He hath gone to the upper blue, 
Where he is free from care and pain, 
For he was to our Saviour true, 
And never was profane." 

Tradition says that he " swore Hke a pirate," 
but to the lovinpf descendant who erected the 
stone his vices were only foibles. 

Perhaps the richest " finds " in a humorous 
way are to be obtained in one of the ceme- 
teries where the monument-maker supplied 
poetry as a part of his stock in trade, as the 
sign which hung over his shop-door indicates: 

" Sculptured marble done here 
Of every kind 
To suit the fancy 
Of the most refined " 

He was proud of his stones and with an 
artist's privilege affixed his name to all in 
the lower riorht-hand corner. Moreover he 
doubtless caused a panic among his rival 
craftsmen by his ability to pictorially repre- 
sent on the marble the scene of death ; a 
death on the railroad, by a man and an engine, 
a death from drowning, by a man in a boat 
fishing, and so on. His poetry is — but let 
us have a few specimens. 

Here is one of this artist's chefs-d'ceiivres, 
with accompanying entablature : 



Berkshire E}3itaphs 351 

" I died a fishing as this picture shows, 
And left this world with all its woes, 
To another region I took my flight 
In Co?' with angels adoreing Christ." 

Above the poetry (?) is a baptism, below 
a man sitting in a boat with pole and line. 

One more from this cemetery in the sculptor- 
poet's best vein : 

" Here lies Mag 
No brag, 
Both fair 
And wise." 

It is unfair to judge this versatile stone- 
cutter by our poetical standards, but by those 
of the time, and he was only a little, if at all, 
inferior in this respect to his contemporaries. 
Many, many are the atrocious poetizings in all 
the Berkshire churchyards ; the only concep- 
tion of poetry being rhyme, not rhythm : 

"Farewell, all sublunary things, 
I go to see the King of Kings." 

or this : 

"They have gone to where — Ah! pause and see. 
Gone to a longe [sic] eternety [i'/V]." 

The doctrines of the Church stand out con- 
spicuously on these ancient slabs, as might be 
expected. 



352 Lenox 

Here is one on the eternal damnation of 
those who die impenitent, a dogma the Church 
is sloughing off with its advancing knowledge 
of God : 

"Where vicious lives all hope deny, 
A falling tear is nature's due." 

Here is one in scriptural form to illustrate 
the prevailing belief of old days in the divine 
hatred and loathing of the creature, man : 

" Blessed in the sight of the Lord is the 
death of his saints. But God is angry 
with the wicked every day." 

Here is another to show the faith of the 
Church in a bodily resurrection : 

" Though worms my poor body may claim 
As their prey, 
'T will outshine when rising the sun 
At noonday." 

One of the most interesting features of 
these ancient cemeteries is the interment 
within them of very many of the old pastors, 
who, beloved of their flock, ministered in these 
parishes for thirty, forty, fifty, and in one case 
almost sixty years, and then found a resting- 
place amid the scenes of their life-work. Those 
were the days of long pastorates and installa- 







■i -a; 



~G S 



^ 



Berkshire E^pitaphs 353 

tion was the marriage of pastor and people for 
Hfe. Reviewing- his ministry on the fiftieth 
anniversary of his settlement over the church 
in Lenox, Dr. Shepard said : 

" Fifty years ago this day, and at this very hour of the 
day (April 30, 1795), ''- scene was witnessed upon this 
hill, of deep moral interest. A youth was solemnly con- 
secrated to the Gospel ministry, but who would recog- 
nize in the time-worn pilgrim who now stands before 
you the same man who was then stationed upon these 
heights of Zion. Since my ordination here I have re- 
ceived into the church 815 persons, baptized 969, at- 
tended the funerals of 953, and have probably preached 
on an average four sermons a week. Your fathers 
did not despise my youth on account of its weak- 
nesses and imperfections ; and I am encouraged by past 
experience to rely on your patience, forbearance, and 
sympathy when all the reward you can hope for will 
consist in the satisfaction of having aided an old man 
down the steep of age and through the last stages of his 
weary pilgrimage." 

Dr. Shepard's grave is just outside the door 
of the village church on the hilltop, with the 
appropriate inscription on the stone : 

" Remember the words that I spake unto 
you while I was yet with you." 

I cannot close this chapter on Berkshire 
epitaphs without saying that laudatory in- 

83 



354 Lenox 

scriptions in these ancient churchyards are ex- 
tremely rare. One of the best is this : 

" Reader, expect the day that shall reveal 
to an assembled world the piety and virtues 
of Deacon James VVadsworth." 

But as a rule it was a modest age, for the 
modesty of true worth says sincerely and be- 
comingly, " When saw we thee an hungered 
and fed thee ? or sick and in prison and minis- 
tered unto thee?" The story of the epitaphs 
is mostly a lesson in mortality, yet here is an- 
other laudatory one which shows that our 
fathers recoofnized in what true religion con- 
sisted. It is to the memory of Timothy Wood- 
bridge, who died in Stockbridge, 1774: 

'' Beneath the sacred honors of the tomb, 
In awful and majestic gloom, 
The man of mercy here conceals his head 
Amidst the awful mansions of the dead. 
No more his liberal hand shall keep the poor. 
Relieve distress, nor scatter joy no more." 

There are other cemeteries in Berkshire be- 
sides those which were common to the people 
of the villagre ; and here and there in out-of- 
the-way places one runs across family burying- 
grounds, which, however, yield nothing of 



Berkshire Epitaphs 



155 



interest to the epitaph-seeker, who witli rev- 
erent iiand removes the moss from the " un- 
couth rhymes, the short and simple annals" 
on these hoary slabs. 




INDEX 



Academy, Lenox, 2, 19-21 ; dis- 
tinguished graduates 20, 179, 
190 
Adams, John Coleman, 105 
Adams, Thatcher M., 199 
Adams, town of, 210, 223, 225, 

302, 306 
Agassiz, Louis, 159 
Alden, Rev. E. K., 40, 313 
Alford, 48, 303 
Allen, Ethan, 266 
Allen, Rev. Thos., 226, 227, 229, 

300, 337, 339 
Allen, William, 312 
American Notes, 151 
Appleton, Misses, 44 
Arnold, Matthew, S7-90 
Aspinwall Hotel, 180, 186 
Aspinwall, W. H., 170, 172 
Athenaeum at Pittsfield, 22S, 230 
Auchmuty, R. T., 167, 175, 1S3 
Auchmuty, Mrs. R. T., 50, 165 
Augusta, Princess, 87 
Avery, Rev. Stephen, 302 

Bacon, Mrs. E. G., 187 
Bald Head, 97, 100, 172, 181 
Ballantine, Rev. John, 303 
Barclay, Henry, 191 
Barlow, Gen. F., 175 
Barlow, Mrs. Francis C, 199 
Barnard, Pres. F. P., 219, 267 
Barnes, James, 84 
Barnes, John S., 200 



Barrington, Great, 23, 48, 62, 
219, 22S, 249, 253, 297 ; pic- 
ture of, century ago, 66 
Bartlett, Gen. W. F., 230 
Bash-Bish Falls, 221, 251 
Bear Mountain, 84 
Becket, 49, 299 
Beecher, Henry Ward, 36, 37, 

84, 103, 104, 171 
Beecher Hill, 36 
Belknap, Rev. Jeremy, 227 
Berkshire Agricultural Society, 

228 
Berkshire Association, minutes 

of, 314-316 
Berkshire Chronicle, The, g 
Berkshire Coffee-House, 69 
Berkshire deserted villages, 268- 

274 
Berkshire Medical Institution, 

228 
Berkshire, separated from Hamp- 
shire, 3, 52 ; first railroads in, 
II, 12; schools in, 63; his- 
tory of, by Field, 92, 177 
Biddle, Mrs. J. W., 1S6 
Bidwell, Rev. Adonijah, 299 
Billings, Josh, grave of, at Lanes- 
borough, 62, 349 
Bishop, D. W., 182, 192 
Bishop, Henry, 189 
Bishop, Judge H. W., 189 
Blithedale Romauce, 152 
Boston & Albany R. R., 222 



357 



OD^ 



Index 



Botta. Amelie, 153 
Boundary line between Massa- 
chusetts and New York, 4, 52 
Bradford. Rev. Tames, 312 
Bradford. Wm. H.. 1S3 
Braem. Henry W., 175, 1S5 
Brainerd, David, 243 
Bremer, Frederika, 79, So, 127 
Briggs, Gen. H. S., 230 
Briggs, Gov. Geo. N., 229 
Bristed, Chas. Astor, 191 
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 

157 
Bryant, Wm. Cullen, 23, 62, S9, 

97-99, 127, 129. 21S, 219, 253 
Buckham. Pres. Matthew, 21 
Bullard, Chas., 193 
Bullard, Wm. S., 169, 170, 191 
Burden, J. W., 1S4 
Burgoyne's march to Boston, 266 
Burr, Aaron, 247 

Carey, Miss Mary DeP., 175, 

1S7 
Catlin, Jacob, Rev., 93, 311, 

319, 321-333. 337 
Catskill Mountains, 172, 218 
Channing, Ellery, 96, 141 
Channing, Wm. Ellery, 9, 2S, 

102, 117, 127, 12S 
Chapel, St. Helena, New Lenox, 

166 
Chapin, Robert W., 200 
Choate, Hon. Joseph, 216 
Chisholm, Lord Provost, S7 
Church, the Lenox Congrega- 
tional, 3S, iSo, 299 ; Trinity 
Episcopal, 165, 19S ; Roman 
Catholic, 179; Methodist Epis- 
copal, 197 
Clareme, 121 

Climate, Berkshire. 153, 154 
Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice, 

87 
Collins, Rev. D., 301, 3^7 
Cook, H. H., 181, 192 
Cooper, Fenimore, 23, no, in 
Country newspapers in early 

times, 10, II 



County conventions in Lenox. 41 
County Court-house, second, 46, 

6S, 178 
Crane, Gov. \V. Murray, 215 
Crane, Zenas, 230 
Curtis Hotel, 43, 68, 102, 203, 

Curtisville, 305 

Cushman, Charlotte, 36, 83, 175, 



Dalton, 215, 223, 225, 229, 303 

Dana, R. S., 175 

Davis, the Hon. David, 20 

Davis, Wm. Stearns, 63, 230 

Dawes, Miss Anna, 229 

Dawes, Senator Henry L., 229 

Dewey. Mary, 79, 80 

Dewey, the Rev. Orville, 28, 
219, 267 

Dickens, Chas., 143 

Division line, between Massa- 
chusetts and New York, 221 

Dome, Taghconic, 65, 74, 89, 
100, 172, 194, 207, 219, 221, 
249, 262 

Duke of Stockbridge, Bellamy, 
105 

Dwight, Pres. T., 25, 37, 65 

Edwards, Rev. Jonathan, 50, 51, 
86, 93, 234, 239, 246-248, 258, 
264, 271, 30S, 309 

Egleston, David, 165 

Egleston, Prof. Thomas. 7, 164, 

174 
Egremont, 48, 301 
Egremont, South, 220, 251 
Eighteenth-century fiction, 109 
Eliot, Geo., 143 
Ellis, Rev. Dr., 156 
Emerson, R. W., 141, 156, 159 
English travellers in Berkshire, 

85. 87 
Epitaphs, Berkshire, 340-345 
Evans, Marian, 143 
Everett, Mt.. 36, 58, 219, 221; 

by whom named, 61; as seen 
I by Dr. Dwight, 65 



Index 



359 



Face to Face, Grant, io6 
Field, Cyrus W., 85, 34° 
Field, Hon. David Dudley, 340 
Field, Rev. David Dudley, loi, 

237, 244- 313, 340 
Field, Rev. Henry M., 20, 102, 

216, 340 
Field, Judge Stephen, 340 
Fields, Jas. T., 34 
Fiske, John, 42 
Florida, town of, 305 
Folsom, Geo. F., i75. 187 
Foster, Giraud, 200, 201 
Freedom of the IVill, 51 
Frelinghuysen, T., 152, 202 
"Friendly Union," Sheffield, 

267 
French and Indian War, 5 
French officers at Stockbridge, 

118 
Frothingham, S., 193 
Fuller, Margaret, 142 
Furniss, Miss C., I75, 187 

Gilder, R. W., 84, loi, 171 
Gilmore, Alfred, I74 
Gilmore, Mrs. Alfred, 196 
Glass Works Grant, Lenox, 205 
Glendale, 238 
Glezen, Levi, 21 
Goelet, Robert, 200 
Goldsmith's Deserted Village, 

quotations from, 270, 271 
Goodale sisters, 36, 63 
Goodman, R., Sr.. 167, I74, '95 
Goodrich, Mrs. J. Z., 288 
Grant, Ministers', 50 
Grant, the Quincy, 50 
Green River, 99 
Greenleaf, Dr. R. C., 175. 184 
Greylock, Mt., 36, 58, 68, 76, 

183, 194, 207, 221, 231; view 

from, 210, 211 
Griswold, D. F., 18S 

Haggerty, Ogden, 170 
Hale, E. E., 152 
Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 23 
Hancock, town of, 225 



Harris, Rev. Samuel, 229 
Harrison, Mrs. Burton, 37, 83, 

105 
Haven, George G., 201 
Hawthorne, Julian, 75, I47> I55 
Hawthorne, Mrs., 137, I39. I40, 

150, 154 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 32-34, 
75, 86, 100, 136-160; Ameri- 
can Note-books, 96, 169 
Hawthorne Street, 156 
Haystack Monument, 213 
Headley, J. T., 96 
Herrick, Zebulon, 10 
Higginson, Geo., 174, 191 
Hillsdale, town of, 305 
Holland, J. G., 277, 2S1 
Holmes, O. W., 34, 61, 70, 96. 
144, 159, 169, 215, 224, 229, 

34<J 
Home, 124 
Home of Catherine Sedgwick, 

Lenox, 202 
Hoosac Tunnel, 209 
Hope Leslie, 12 1 
Hopkins Memorial Manse at 

Great Barrington, 252 
Hopkins, Pres. Mark, 20, 91 
Hopkins, Rev. Samuel, 64, 66, 
93, 236, 241, 252, 253-262, 
271, 298, 308, 319, 321-333 
Hosmer, Harriet, 23, 79 
Hotchkin, Rev. John, 21, 189 
Housatonic, town of, 218, 223, 

250, 305 
Housatonic River, 48, 59 
"House of Mercy," Pittsfield, 

224 
House of the Seven Gables, 146, 

149-151, 156. 192 
Howe, Dr. Samuel, 169 
Hubbard, Rev. Jonathan, 297 
Humphrey, Rev. Heman, 226. 

229, 312 
Hyde, Rev. Alvan, 304, 338 

" Ice Glen," Stockbridge, 66, 

100 
Indian chiefs, 94 



36o 



Index 



Indian monument at Stock- 
bridge, 86, 234, 238 

Indian names, 58-60 

Indian trail across the Hoosacs, 
264 

Indians, in Berkshire, 3, 48, 49, 
51, 57-60. 205, 234, 240-249 

Indians, Afemoirs of Housatint- 
niik, by Samuel Hopkins 
(Springfield), 94 

Interlaken (Curtisville), 238 

Iron Works, Lenox, 205 

Irving, Washington, 23, no, in 

James, G. P. R., 34 

Jameson, Mrs. Anna, 28, 69, 72, 

79, 90, 113, 127, 128, 237 
Jaques, Dr. Henry P., 185 
Jesup, Morris K., 164, 184 
Judson, Rev. Ephraim, 265, 311, 

312, 339 

Kelvin, Lord, 87 
Kemble, Mrs. Fanny, 8, 17, 21, 
28-31, 35, 44, 69-76, 80-82, 
84, 90, 127, 12S, 141, 164, 168, 
169, 171 
Kemble Street, 17 
Kingsland, Mrs. A. C, 186 
Kingsley, Chas., 85 
Kinne, Rev. Aaron, 303 
Kinnicutt, Dr. F. P., 87, 187 
Kneeland, Miss Adele, 189 
Kneeland, Chas., 165, 174 
Kuhn, Mrs. H., 175, 186 

Lanesborough, 214, 299 

Lanier, Chas., 165, 170, i8r, 196 

Lathrop, Mrs. Rose Hawthorne, 
35, 81, 140 

Laurel Hill, 239 

Laurel Hill Association, Stock- 
bridge, 275-293 

Laurel Lake, 84, 171, 193, 201 

Lecky's History of England, 54 

Lee, 48, 225, 303 

Lee. Mrs., 189 

Lenox, settlement and incorpo- 
ration, I, 4, 5, 53 ; old build- 



ings, 2, 16 ; original name of 
settlement, 5 ; early ecclesias- 
tical questions, 6 ; contribu- 
tions to American Revolution, 
7; non-importation agreement, 
7; town minutes, 7; cemetery 
at, 8; Channing's address at, 
9; becomes county seat, 9; 
weekly newspaper, 11 ; first 
Berkshire County railroad 
convention, 12 ; early stage- 
routes, 13, 14; Berkshire Cof- 
fee- House, 14; in court week, 
15; figlit to retain courts at, 
16; removal of courts, iS; sum- 
mer visitors at, 18; site of jail 
and "Gallows Hill," 18; early 
references to, 25-27, 30; liter- 
ary society in, 35, 48, 122, 141; 
Beecher in, 36, 37 ; county 
conventions in, 41 ; temperance 
revival, 41 ; early industries in, 
43, 205; beginnings of change 
to resort, 44; Library Associa- 
tion, 46; spelling of name 
of town, 56; no poor in, 71; 
social, 105; view from Haw- 
thorne's house, 144; modern, 
161-206; villas in, 172-176, 
216; streets in, 177: valuation 
of, 204; population of, 204; 
business of, 205, 206; creation 
of post-office at, 228 

Library, Town, 42, 46, 166 

Linwoods, 121 

Liquor, use of, in old times, 317, 

Literary women in Berkshire, 

79. 82, 83 
"Little red house," 96, 100, 

loi, 143, 146, 154-156. 170, 

171, 192 
Live and Let Live, 123 
Livingston, E. McA., 187 
Longfellow, H. W., 141, 157, 

159 
Lothrop, Mrs. T. K., 188 
Lowell, J. R., 34, 96, 141, 142, 

150, 151, 159 



Index 



361 



Lowell and His Friends, 152 
Lydig, David, 199 

McKim, Chas. F., 187 

Mann, Horace, 132, 137 

Maplewood Young Ladies' In- 
stitute, 228 

Alarble Faun, 158 

Married or Single, 126 

Martineau, Harriet, 23, 28, 76- 
79, 125, 237 

Mason, Lowell, 42 

Melville, Herman, 35, 62, 96, 

142, 229 
Mill River, 305 
Ministers' Grant, 50 
Mitchell, D. G., 121, 125, 202, 

231 
Mitford, Miss, iii, 130 
Monson, Rev. Samuel, 6, 300 
Monterey, 299 
Monument Mt., 58, 95, 97, 172, 

216-218, 221, 232, 249; why so 

called, 66 
Monument Mountain, 99, 233 
Morgan, Geo. H., 165, 170, 1S5, 

199 
Mosses from an Old Manse, 139, 

143, 147 

Motley, John L., 157 

Mountainous region, Haw- 
thorne's view of, 146 

Movements of religious thought 

in New England, 260 
Music, sacred, 42 

Nature Studies in Berkshire, 105 

New Ashford, 213 

A'eiu England Tale, 100, 112, 

113, 119, 131, 133, 258 
New Marlborough, 49, 251; 

academy at, 272 
Non-importation agreement, 7 
North .^dams, 209, 223, 305 
'■ Northampton woods," 51 

October Mt., 183, 194 
Oliver. Gen,, 175 



Onota Lake, 231 
Otis, 225, 302 

Parish, Miss Helen, 189 
Parkhurst, Rev. C. H., 40, 64 ' 
Parsons, John E., 87, 165, 166, 

175, 185 
Paterson, Major-General John, 7, 

92, 164, 196; life of, by Egles- 

ton, 92 
Paterson Monument, 177 
Patterson, R. W., 174, 200 
Pease, H. H., 191 
Perry's Peak, 221 
Peru, town of, 301 
Pierce, Franklin, 158, 159 
Pierpont, Judge, 162, 174, 175 
Pitt, Will., Earl of Chatham, 56, 

225 
Pittsfield, 10, 16, 57, 59, 62, 

214, 222-231, 299 
Planchette, amusing story about, 

80 
Pontoosuc Lake, 57, 230 

Queechy Lake, 63 

Quincy, Judge Edmund, 49, 50 

Quincy Grant, 50 

Rathbone, Gen. John F., 170, 

174 
Rattlesnake Mt., 58, lOi, 172, 

194, 221 
Redwood, 121 

Revolution, the American, 7 
Richmond, Lennox, Duke of, 6, 

53-57 
Richmond, town of, 5, 53, 299 
Robeson, W. R., 173, 188 
Rockwell, Judge Julius, 202 
Root, Geo. F., 219, 267 

St. Helen's Home, Interlaken, 

238 
Salisbury, Conn., 74, 221 
Salisbury, Prof., 173, 188 
Sandisfield, 49, 299; ministers 

in, 271 



362 



Index 



Sands, Philip, ig3 

Sargent, John O., 84 

Sargent, Miss Georgiana, 200 

Savoy, 305 

Scarlet Letter, 137, 142, 144 

Schermerhorn, Mrs. Adeline E., 

46, 164, 171 
Schermerhorn, F. Aug., 165, 

170, 185, 199 
Schermerhorn, J. Egmont, 189 
Schermerhorn, W. C, 179 
Sedgwick, Miss Catherine, 12- 

14, 22, 23, 27, 45, 61, 66, 70, 

72, 77-79, 98, 102, 104, 108- 

135, 140, 163, 202, 231, 236, 

237, 288, 335 
Sedgwick, Charles, 122 
Sedgwick, Mrs. Charles, 82, 102; 

school for girls, 22-24, 82, 202 
Sedgwick, Ellery, 173, iSS 
Sedgwick, Hon. Theodore, 115, 

231 
Sergeant, John, 49, 94, 234, 241, 

297, 334 
Shaw, Miss Anna, 189 
Shaw, S. Parkman, 174, 196 
Shays' rebellion, 266 
Sheffield, 48, 219, 250, 251, 262- 

268, 297 
Shepard, Rev. Samuel, 19, 38- 

.40, 313, 338, 353 
Sigourney, Mrs., 82, 100 
Silliman, Prof. B., 25, 66, 67, 

270 
Sismondi, 23, 127 
Skinner's Alyths and Legends, 

60 
" Sky Farm," 37 
Sloane, John, 87, 170, 183, 200 
Sloane, William D., 1S2, 193, 

195 
Snow Image and Other Ta/es, 

151 

Southfield, 305 
Springfield, Mass., 22S 
Stanley, Dean, 85, 86 
Star Papers, 36, 103, 104 
Stebbins, Emma, 164, 188 
Steele, Rev. E., 302 



Stephens, Hon. Alexander H., 20 
Stevens, B. K., 189 
Stockbridge, 32, 48, 49, 51, 59, 
77, 87, 89, 228, 231-248, 275- 

293 
Stockbridge Bowl, 32, 61, 97, 

100, 169-172, 181, 216 
Stokes, Anson Phelps, 174, 181, 

187 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 79, 80, 

III, 255, 260, 262 
Strong, Rev. Cyprian, 39 
Strong, Rev. Thos., 298 
Struthers, Mrs. John, 199, 200 
Sturgis, F. K., 174, 201 
Sumner, Charles, 70, 74, 169 
Surrender of Louisbourg, news 

of, 266 
Swift. Rev. J., 300 

Taghconic Mountains, 36, 48, 49 
I'ales and Sketches, 12 1, 131 
Tanglewood Tales, 145 
Tappan, William, 170, 191 
Taylor, Zachary, 136 
Temperance minute by Berk- 
shire physicians, 41 
Temperance revival, 41 
Theology of the fathers, 319-332 
Thompson, Mrs. William, 170 
Thoreau, H. D., 142 
Tiffany, Mrs., 164 
Todd, Rev. John, 226, 229, 312 
"Tom Ball" Mt., 221 
Travellers, 12 1 
Tunce Told Tales, 139 
Tyringham, 49, 84, 299 

Unitarianism, rise of, 118 

Village Improvement, 275-293 

Wahconah Falls, 231 
Walker, Judge Wm., 174, 195 
Walpole, Horace, letters of, ref- 
erences to Duke of Richmond, 

54 
Ward, S. G., 70, 168. 174, 191 
Warner, Charles Dudley, 106 



Index 



;63 



Warner, Susan, and IVit/e Wide 

World, 63 
Washington, Mount, 48 
Washington, town of, 225, 301 
Watson, Elkanah, 229 
Watson, John (Ian Maclaren), 87 
Weather in England, go 
Welch, Rev. Whitman, 300 
Wendell, Jacob, 61, 225 
West, Stephen, 93, 236, 244, 

309, 310, 336 
West Stockbridge, 49, 305 
West Stockbridge Centre, 303 
Westinghouse, George, 87, 182, 

193 
Western Massachusetts, History 

of, by Holland, 177 
Wharton, Mrs. Edith, S3 
Wharton, Edward R., 200 
Wharton, Mrs. Wm, C, 199 
Wheeler, Miss, 154 



Whipple, E. P., 34, 96, 141, 

159 
Whistler, Joseph S., 196 
White, Mrs. Joseph, 174, 196 
Whittier, reference to Hopkins, 

255, 259. 261 
Williams College, 36, 40, 6r, 91, 

213 
Williamstown, 36, 212, 228, 299 
Williamstown, South, 213, 305 
Windsor, 301 
Winthrop, Mrs. R., 185 
Wolfe and Montcalm, 5 
Wonder Book for Children, 100, 

105, 149, 150, 152 
Woolsey, E. J., 170-172 
Writers, notable female, no 

Yale College, 38 

Yancy, Hon. Wm. L., 20 

" Yokun's Seat," 184 




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